Rospatent refused to register the trademark “Child Protection” for Sberbank

The decision to refuse was made following a compliance check. Rospatent does not publish the reasons for refusals. Sber’s press service did not respond to RB.RU’s request.

Rospatent could consider that registering the name “Child Protection” in class 36 of the ICTU (insurance services) is contrary to the public interest, since “the issue of child protection is very delicate and a priority for society.” and the State,” said S&K Vertical. lawyer Ekaterina Shansherova.

“The phrase may be associated with the Convention on the Protection of the Rights of the Child, with the protection of the rights and interests of children in general, for example, which is incompatible with the activities of financial organizations. As a rule, Rospatent registers designations containing the word “child” in class 36 of the IKGS for charitable foundations and non-profit organizations,” the expert said.

The phrases “Capital transfer” and “Managed capital” were not recorded as they describe the service itself. According to paragraph 3 of section 1 of article 1483 of the Civil Code, trademarks cannot be designations composed solely of elements that characterize the products, including those that indicate their type, quality, quantity, property, purpose, value, as well as time. , the place and the method of production or marketing, Shansherova recalled. “If these phrases were registered, other banks and insurance organizations would not be able to use them to describe their services. For the same reasons, Rospatent refused to register other applicants for the designations “Tender to all” or the words platim,” the lawyer explained.

The head of the international management of the Regionservice Bar Association, Ksenia Kasyanenko, agreed that the phrases that Sberbank wanted to register “are commonly used designations and are used by many market participants in the field of banking and insurance services.” . According to the expert, one of the most common reasons for denying trademark registration is the lack of distinctiveness, that is, the ability of a trademark to evoke associations in the consumer with the goods and services of a manufacturer or service provider. in particular.

This is not Rospatent’s first refusal of Sberbank structures. In December, the bank filed a lawsuit against the service in the Intellectual Property Rights Court over its refusal to register a patent for document recognition technology. The bank was going to patent the verification through an analysis of extracts from the Unified Registry of State Legal Entities and powers. Rospatent decided that there was nothing original about this. The director of public relations of the company “Biorg”, which is engaged in the digitization of images with personal data, Alexander Zverev, in conversation with RB.RU, noted that he supports Rospatent’s decision. “In a figurative sense, Sber tried to patent the word “milk.” And become a monopolist of all rivers of milk. This would be unacceptable and would limit the development of technical progress,” Zverev emphasized.