Twitter is to date one of the most popular social media platforms, widely used worldwide, from the President of the Unite States to the Pope in Italy. And as every giant worth of respect, Twitter constantly keeps an eye on whoever can attempt to its iconic white-blue-background bird trying to prevent others to replicate it.
And this is what recently happened in Singapore.
VV Technology, a Singaporean technology startup, applied for a trademark registration in 2018. The start-up mark consisted of a flying bird, with an eye, pictured from its side. The Singaporean startup planned to use the trademark for a mobile application for online shopping and food delivery services.
Without any delay, the American social media platform opposed the said application citing the logo's similarity to its own well-known trademark.
From their side, VV Technology claimed that mobile app users are "digital natives" which would not be confused by the two similar bird trademarks.
On March 11th 2022, the Singaporean Trademark Office ruled in favor of the American giant. According to its decision, the trademark application shall be rejected.
On one hand, Twitter logo's reputation will reduce the likelihood that the public will be confused by the two marks because the world wide's reputation of Twitter will hardly be affected by a small startup company and therefore, the consumers won't likely to mistake them.
Nevertheless, the Office also report that it may still be possible to see the risk of misleading for the consumers since the two marks may make them believe that there is some kind of economic link between the two companies.
Consequently, the Singaporean Trademark Office rejected the startup application declaring the concept similarity between the marks, the application of the startup shall be rejected.
So, which are the requirements to be met for the opposition to be accepted?
On one side, the similarity between the specimens, which, as a matter of fact, plays a fundamental role when it comes to examine the substation of a filed opposition. Secondly the similarity between the goods and the services sold by the opponents.
As usual in many countries in the world, the ultimate parameter is the likelihood of confusion by the relevant public, as stated by the Art. 8 (2) "A trade mark must not be registered if, because (b)it is similar to an earlier trade mark and is to be registered for goods or services identical with or similar to those for which the earlier trade mark is protected, there exists a likelihood of confusion on the part of the public".
The decision raised not only few concerns by the IP experts. Notwithstanding the argument adopted by the Trademark Office seems in line with the provision of the Law, it has been said that the concept of 'likelihood of confusion,' has been too widely interpretated, considering that the concept shall be interpretated as "belief of consumers that the services are emanate from the same source", which was not the actual case.
What is probably out of question, is that the case shows how in Singapore, startups and young entrepreneurs are still living under the low awareness of how effectively manage IP rights and avoid to be involved in Trademark disputes. However, the clue of the IP concept is slowly making its way... so we believe that there is still a room to .... Fly high!
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