Trademarks in Coronatimes
Arjen van Baren
Trademarks can prove to be a valuable business asset. In the current Coronavirus times this is not less true. Not only pharmaceutical companies but also people trying to take advantage of the current situation are therefore actively seeking trademark registrations related to the virus around the world. Numerous applications including either Covid-19 or Corona have yet been filed at various IP officies around the world. Many of them will most likely not be successful. In the EU, for example, the IP office (EUIPO) can refuse an application based on the argument that it should not positively assist people who wish to further their business aims by means of trademarks that offend against certain basic values of civilised society.
I’ve collected a few recent examples of interesting cases.
In China, a trademark applicant and his agent were fined for filing an application for ‘Li Wenliang’ , the name of the Chinese ophthalmologist who was the first to warn about an outbreak and died shortly afterwards. The fine was imposed for malicious filing of a trademark. Such an application is likely to cause significant social adverse effects, according to the Chinese IP bureau. The same argument applied to attempts to register the names of the key hospitals fighting the virus in Wuhan: ‘Huoshen Mountain Hospital’ and ‘Leishen Mountain Hospital’.
In the US, an applicant named The Edibles Club filed an application for a stylized version of Covid-19, to be used for T-shirts. Apple recently filed a trademark application in the US for the logo of their new COVID-19 app.
Last but not least, the pharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences, one of the many companies working on a drug against COVID-19, recently filed a trademark application in the US for the shape of a bottle (see image below) to be used for pharmaceutical preparations for the treatment of the coronavirus. This could mean that they expect their drug Remdesivir to become available on the market in the near future.
If you have any questions about trademarks, feel free to get in touch. We have expertise and experience in the field of trademarks. We also published an article on Corona and contracts.
