Date of
Judgment:
July 11, 2000
Issuing
Authority:
Supreme Court
Level of
the Issuing Authority: Final Instance
Type of
Procedure:
Judicial(Administrative)
Subject
Matter: Trademarks
Summary
of the judgment (decision):
1. The
scope of "trademark that is likely to cause confusion in connection with
the goods or services pertaining to a business of another person" as
referred to in Article 4, paragraph (1), item (xv) of the Trademark Act
includes a trademark which, when used for its designated goods or services, is
likely to cause people to mistake the designated goods or services as goods or
services pertaining to the business of an entity that has a close business
relationship with another person, for example, a relationship between a parent
company and its subsidy or affiliated company, or a relationship of members of
a group of companies that carry out product development projects under the same
indication, or in other words, a trademark that has the likelihood of confusion
in a broad sense.
2. Whether or not a trademark is likely to cause
confusion as referred to in Article 4, paragraph (1), item (xv) of the
Trademark Act should be determined comprehensively in light of factors such as
the degree of similarity between the trademark and another person's indication,
the degree of well-knowness, fame and creative nature of the other person's
indication, and the degree of association between the designated goods or
services of the trademark and the goods or services pertaining to the other
person's business, as well as the commonality in terms of traders and consumers
of goods or services and other circumstances of transactions. Furthermore, such
determination should be made on the basis of the level of care that traders and
consumers of the designated goods or services of the trademark normally have.
3. A registered trademark consisting of
horizontally written katakana characters, "レールデュタン"
(rērudyutan), for which goods including cosmetic utensils, body ornaments, hair
ornaments, bags, and sacks are designated, falls under the category of
trademark prescribed in Article 4, paragraph (1), item (xv) of the Trademark
Act, given the following circumstances as described in the judgment: the
registered trademark is identical in sound with the cited trademark and other
trademarks that another company uses as indications for one of its perfumes;
the cited trademark, etc. are well-known among traders who deal with perfumes
and consumers who are interested in luxury perfumes and they have originality
as trademarks, and said designated goods have a very close association with
perfumes in terms of their primary use, that is, adorning women; and consumers
of the goods related to the registered trademark and those of the goods related
to the cited trademark, etc. mostly overlap.