Bourbon too well known to be confusing

The word Bourbon has a broader application than you might think. It is not always connected with Bourbon County in Kentucky or, going deeper into the past, the royal family in France. The word Bourbon has also always been used to designate other goods. So much so that it has led to conflicts in the market. One recent conflict came up in the case Ipanema Bourbon v Caffe Bourbon in 2010.

The Chamber of Patent Disputes of the Russian Patent Office examined an appeal filed by Ipanema Agricola (Brazil) in connection with its application for the figurative trade mark below, with priority of June 4 2010.

The Chamber agreed with the applicant that the mark was not confusingly similar to a registration cited by the examiner — shown below — with priority of January 11 2006, covering similar goods in class 30 and registered in the name of Italian company L’Aromatika.

The Chamber pointed out that the word element Bourbon is the name of a variety of coffee popular in Brazil. The application is a combined designation and includes the words Ipanema Coffees in a black oval. The word element Ipanema is distinctive in relation to the claimed goods (Ipanema is a beach and a prestigious district in south Rio de Janeiro — but not many Russians are aware of that). The word element Coffees is universally understood, it points to the kind of the claimed goods and as such is not a protectable element.

The previous trade mark is also an oval in the centre of which there is a picture of a stylised coffee bean capped with a crown, surrounded below by the word elements Caffè Borbone. The word Caffè, though in Italian, is clearly translated as coffee while the word Borbone refers again to the French royal family.

The Chamber of Patent Disputes examined both designations and came to the conclusion that the word elements Bourbon and Borbone have a certain phonetic similarity, but this cannot serve as a basis to infer that they are confusingly similar because unlike the word Borbone, Bourbon characterises the goods and cannot individualise a trade mark. The general visual impression created by the claimed designation and the cited trade mark are different, which also speaks in favour of the difference between the designations. As a result the Chamber ruled in favor of registration.