Al Rawashdeh, Waddah

Criteria for Determining Whether a Trademark Is Well-Known

Category: Al Rawashdeh, Waddah

Criteria, famous trademark, trademarks with a reputation, well-known trademark

Nowadays, a trademark gives an incentive for commercial establishments to maintain the quality of their products or services such as COCA-COLA and Google. The customer will observe the trademark, indicating that certain products or services as a guarantee of quality. However, increasing figures of products appear on the market, which are similar to those marked with well-known trademarks. All these issues lead to the fact of how important is to protect well-known trademarks, which emerged strongly on the national and international forum. Recently, several trademark has international or worldwide renown and its reputation surpasses the country of origin where it has been registered and acquired fame in a relevant sector among the consumers’ public, then that trademark called “well-known” trademark. The criteria for determining whether a mark is well-known have two folds: First, they are decisive factors to distinguish theoretically between ordinary trademarks and the well-known trademarks; second, they are important to confer protection in case of infringement. This paper highlights the definition of trademark and famous trademark under EU, USA, and international approaches. In addition, this paper examines the criteria-if available- provided under the WIPO Joint Resolution Concerning provisions on the Protection of Well-known mark.