On July 24, 2025, another session of the intellectual property consultation point for exporters concluded.
Having received a decision refusing registration of a trademark for goods in class 01 of the Nice Classification for a combined designation containing the verbal elements "professional GERMAN" in two tiers, a Belarusian manufacturer of wallpaper adhesives contacted the consultation point with a question about the possibility of overcoming such a refusal.
After analyzing the applied-for designation, the consultant based his response on the norms of Belarusian trademark law.
The applied-for combined designation is a graphic composition on a plane in the form of a black rectangular substrate, at the top of which is placed a stylized image of bird wings, below - a verbal part consisting of two verbal elements "professional GERMAN" in two tiers, below - a rectangular contour (for indicating inside the type of adhesive) and three octagonal contours placed below (for writing inside additional information about the product).
In accordance with subparagraph 5.1 of paragraph 5 of Article 4 of the Law "On Trademarks and Service Marks" (hereinafter - the Law), designations capable of misleading the consumer regarding the goods, their place of origin or their manufacturer are not eligible for registration as trademarks.
Understanding that the designation "GERMAN" misleads the consumer regarding the place of origin of the adhesive produced by his Belarusian enterprise, the consulting party proposed to reduce this word in size.
Answer: Even if reduced in size, the word "GERMAN" will still evoke in the consumer an association with goods manufactured in Germany and is capable of misleading the consumer regarding the place of origin of the goods.
Then the consulting party proposed to exclude the word "GERMAN" from the application, to which he received the following answer:
In accordance with paragraph 152 of the Regulations on the Procedure for Registration of a Trademark and Service Mark, approved by the Resolution of the Council of Ministers of the Republic of Belarus dated December 28, 2009 No. 1719, changes relating to the applied-for designation may be accepted by the examination only if they are insignificant, that is, do not change the visual and/or phonetic impression of the designation. Naturally, the phonetic impression of the reduced-size verbal part of the combined designation will remain the same. Therefore, making changes to the application with the aim of subsequently submitting a request for a re-examination is impractical given the additional costs of paying patent fees for extending the deadline for submitting a request for a re-examination, for making changes to the materials of the application, and for submitting a request for conducting a re-examination of the applied-for designation.
The applicant was offered to resubmit the application, excluding the word "GERMAN" from the designation, and to disclaim the word "professional", since from the point of view of the Law (subparagraph 1.4 of paragraph 1 of Article 4), it is unprotectable, as it indicates the quality and value of the goods.
