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Calame, Thierry --- "Unauthorised Permitted Use in a Multilingual Jurisdiction" [2006] ELECD 245; in Phillips, Jeremy (ed), "Trade Marks at the Limit" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2006)

Book Title: Trade Marks at the Limit

Editor(s): Phillips, Jeremy

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781845427382

Section: Chapter 17

Section Title: Unauthorised Permitted Use in a Multilingual Jurisdiction

Author(s): Calame, Thierry

Number of pages: 11

Extract:

17. Unauthorised permitted use in a
multilingual jurisdiction
Thierry Calame

1. INTRODUCTION
The increased mobility of humans and the diminishing importance of national
boundaries have led to a mixing of different cultures and languages. This
development has also had an impact on trade mark law. First, increased inter-
nationalisation is reflected in legal arrangements and conventions embracing
numerous countries and languages. Secondly, as a result of increased mobility
and migration across national boundaries, not only multilingual countries but
most trade mark systems are faced with a multitude of languages. The prob-
lems associated with multilingualism arise, therefore, in almost all trade mark
jurisdictions.
Multilingualism enables businesses, in creating brands, to draw from an
enlarged pool of terms which can be understood by at least some of the rele-
vant average consumers. Such terms are particularly favoured in brand
creation because they enable trade mark owners to communicate ideas solely
by virtue of the meaning which is inherent in these terms. Conversely, the
grant to single traders of exclusive rights in terms which other traders may
wish to use raises problems. This issue arises frequently in multilingual juris-
dictions where the number of terms which can be understood by at least some
of the relevant average consumers is particularly large.
This chapter seeks to analyse some of the effects of multilingualism on
registrability and the scope of trade mark protection as well as unauthorised
permitted use. Although this analysis is based on a number of selected multi-
lingual jurisdictions,1 it ...