經通國際智慧產權事務所

On November 15, 2007, the Taiwan Intellectual Property Office’s (TIPO) decision of rejecting the trademark opposition filed by Visa International Service Association Corporation (VISA) against the trademark application number 093020666 bearing “” (designating medical products of monitoring instruments, thermometers, etc.) and the Committee of Appeal of the Ministry of Economic Affairs’ rejection against the subsequent appeal were upheld by the Taipei High Administrative Court. In the said decision, the Court noted that because the disputed trademark was concluded to be not similar to the series of prior trademark registrations including “”, “”, “”, “”, “”, “”, etc. registered by the VISA, confusion of recognition among the consumers was unlikely.

The appellant, VISA, provided the claims of that the internationally renowned series of VISA trademarks were registered in Taiwan as early as 1976 with extremely substantial and wide use in both Taiwan and numerous foreign countries. Nevertheless, the Court denied the similarity between the opposed trademark and VISA’s trademarks based on the following statements:

1. The disputed trademark is composed of lowercase letters of “visa”, and thus has different appearance from those of the appellant’s trademarks composed of uppercase letters “VISA”.
2. In addition, because the appellant’s trademarks are all with the main bodies of “VISA”, but the disputed trademark includes the parts of “” and “” (transliteration of the Chinese characters in English: life visa) in larger fonts, the disputed trademark has different appearance and sound from the appellant’s trademarks.
3. With the denotations of passports and official entry/departure documents, “VISA” is a commonly used term not uniquely invented by the appellant.
4. As “” is the transliteration of and connected to “” implying physical wellness, when comparing the disputed trademark with the appellant’s trademarks for similarity, the disputed trademark should be wholly viewed as “” without being broken into the element of “”.
5. “” has different appearance, sound, meaning and concept from the appellant’s trademarks.

Based on the reasons above, the Court rejected all of the appellant’s claims. Even though the appellant filed a subsequent appeal with the Supreme Administrative Court, the Supreme Administrative Court confirmed the Taipei High Administrative Court’s said ruling to be lawful and rendered the final decision of rejecting VISA’s claims.

Organized and translated by Akina Pan

International Affairs