EUIPO buries Reckitt Benckiser ‘botanical’ TM
The European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) has rejected British consumer products company Reckitt Benckiser's efforts to register ‘Botanical Origin’ as a trademark for household cleaning products.
Last Tuesday, August 13, the EUIPO’s fifth board of appeal ruled that the ‘Botanical Origin’ mark was descriptive and lacked any distinctive character.
“The relevant public will, immediately and without further reflection, understand the sign as providing the information that the goods come from a botanical source and/or contain ingredients that have a plant-based origin,” the decision said.
The ruling upholds a previous decision by an EUIPO examiner who in February refused registration of the mark on the grounds that ‘botanical origin’ was descriptive of plant-derived cleaning products.
In its appeal, Reckitt Benckiser argued that this did not apply to all of the goods covered by the application, such as bleach and disposable wipes, which are not plant based.
According to the appeals board, however, even though a mark may not be immediately descriptive of some of the goods and services in question, it may be “perceived by the relevant public as only providing promotional information on the nature, purpose, performance and subject matter of the goods and services concerned and not as indicating their [commercial] origin”.
The appeals board also rejected Reckitt Benckiser’s argument that the examiner had ignored its previous registrations for ‘Botanics’.
“The examiner merely pointed out that the fact that the mark at issue in the present case contains the word ‘Botanical’, which has the same meaning as the two prior marks ‘Botanics’ put forward by the applicant, does not automatically mean that it is registrable,” the appeals board wrote.
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