Article 131 1. Rights of protection shall not be granted for signs, whose use:
(i) infringes third parties’ personal or economic rights, or (ii) is contrary to law, public order or morality, or (iii) may mislead the public, in particular as to the nature, quality, properties of the goods or, with
regard to paragraph (3), as to the origin thereof. 2. A right of protection shall not be granted for a sign, if:
(i) it has been applied for protection with the Patent Office in bad faith, (ii) it incorporates the name or abbreviated name of the Republic of Poland, or its symbols
(emblem, national colours or national anthem), the names or armorial bearings of Polish voivodships, towns or communities, the insignia of the armed forces, paramilitary organisations or police forces, reproductions of Polish decorations, honorary distinctions or medals, military medals or military insignia, or other official or generally used distinctions and medals, in particular those of government administration, local self-administration or social organisations performing activities in vital public interests, where these organisations’ activities extend to the entire territory of the State or to a substantial part thereof, unless the applicant is able to produce evidence of his right, in particular in a form of an authorisation issued by a competent State agency or a permission given by an organisation, to use the sign in the course of trade,
(iii) it incorporates the abbreviated names or symbols (armorial bearings, flags, emblems) of other countries, international organisations, as well as official signs, hallmarks indicating control and warranty adopted in other countries, if the prohibition of registration follows from international agreements, unless the applicant is able to produce an authorisation issued by a competent authority, which authorises him to use such signs in the course of trade,
(iv) it incorporates officially recognised signs accepted for the use in trade, such, in particular, as: safety marks, quality marks, hallmarks of legalisation – to the extent to which it could mislead the public as to the nature of such signs, unless the applicant is able to prove his right to use them,
(v) it incorporates elements being symbols, in particular of a religious, patriotic or cultural nature – to the extent to which it could hurt religious feelings, sense of patriotism or national tradition,
(vi) it constitutes a form or another feature of the goods or their packaging, which is dictated exclusively by their nature, is necessary to achieve a technical result or it gives substantial value to the goods. 3. In the case of wines and spirits, any trademark, which incorporates geographical elements discordant with the true origin of the good, shall be considered as a trademark misleading the public. 4. A right of protection shall not be granted for a trademark that contains geographical elements which, although literally true as to the territory, region or locality, in which the goods originate, are of such a nature as to mislead the public by false representing that the goods originate in another territory famous of given goods. In the case of homonymous geographical indications for wines and beers, protection shall be accorded on the condition that the subsequent applicant, who has later filed his application alters his trademark at the invitation of the Patent Office so as to make it distinguishable from the trademark earlier registered or applied for registration. 5. The filing, as a trademark, of a sign which is used by another person as the name under which that person’s business activity is run, shall, in particular where the name in question is an ordinary word, not constitute an autonomous ground for refusal to grant a right of protection, where the applicant has acted in good faith and:
(i) the name is not used as a notorious trademark on the territory of the Republic of Poland for the goods of the same kind, or
(ii) at the date of filing of the trademark application, there were no conflicting interests due, in particular, to a different sphere of activity, the range of activity reduced to a local territory, or different forms of use of the both signs.