Chanel has successfully pursued an opposition at the UK Intellectual Property Office on the basis of its rights in mark COCO.
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The luxury goods manufacturer took action against a Vietnamese company’s application to register COCOGOODSCO for a range of cosmetic and personal care products. Chanel filed extensive evidence of its use of COCO as a trade mark, including for its iconic COCO and COCO MADEMOISELLE perfumes, and ROUGE COCO lipstick.
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The hearing officer found the average consumer would readily perceive the opposed mark as COCO GOODS CO; the fact that the applicant had conjoined the terms did not detract from this. Once that had been established, it was almost inevitable that likelihood of confusion would be found for the majority of the opposed products.
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The applicant hung onto its claim to “essential oils for hair used as cosmetics” (which were not sufficiently similar to the opponent’s goods for confusion to arise), but still faced a £1700 award of costs, having been the substantial loser in the case.
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Chanel had elected not to oppose registration of the mark for a range of coconut-based food products, and this case shows how strategically focussing the scope of an opposition, only on areas where success is likely, can limit costs exposure.
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For brands of key importance, also, we’d always recommend putting a trade mark watching service in place, to monitor for the filing of conflicting marks, so that oppositions can be filed, when necessary.

#trademarks #brands