26 August 2014Trademarks

Angry Birds lose bite in trademark claim

A Malaysian snack maker has been told it can continue with its ‘Angry Bite’ branding despite complaints from the maker of the popular Angry Birds franchise.

The Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (IPOS) said that Kimanis Food Industries’ Angry Bite snack was not too similar to the Angry Birds trademark owned by Finland-based Rovio Entertainment.

Rovio had opposed an application by Kimanis to trademark its snack on the grounds that Angry Birds is well known in Singapore.

Rovio said the name and image, which also shows a face that it said was similar to its cartoon birds, may cause confusion among consumers.

But the claims were rejected by IPOS.

“There is no visual or conceptual similarity between the application mark and the opponents' earlier mark (a word only mark),” it wrote in its decision.

“Any aural similarity is traded off against the dissimilarities such that on the whole, the marks are more dissimilar than similar”.

The IPOS decision added that Rovio would not be able to establish a reasonable likelihood of confusion even if the marks were more similar.

“Importantly, these are food products such that the purchasing public will exercise more care for safety reasons, since they are items which will be ingested,” it said.

Kimanis had first applied to protect its trademark on April 5, 2012, with Rovio filing its notice of opposition on September 6 that year.

It is not the first time the Angry Birds franchise has been involved in an IP dispute.

Earlier this month, WIPR reported that US artist Juli Adams had sued pet care company Hartz Mountain Corporation claiming it had entered into an agreement with Rovio to sell Angry Birds themed pet toys despite her owning the IP specifically covering pet toys.

In September last year, Peter Vesterbacka, head of business development  at Rovio, said during the International Association for the Protection of Intellectual Property meeting in Helsinki that the Angry Birds model was increasingly targeted by people attempting to copy its brand.

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