اليابان

Date of Judgment: July 11, 2000

Issuing Authority: Supreme Court

Level of the Issuing Authority: Final Instance

Type of Procedure: Judicial(Administrative)

Subject Matter: Trademarks

Summary of the judgment (decision):

1. The scope of "trademark that is likely to cause confusion in connection with the goods or services pertaining to a business of another person" as referred to in Article 4, paragraph (1), item (xv) of the Trademark Act includes a trademark which, when used for its designated goods or services, is likely to cause people to mistake the designated goods or services as goods or services pertaining to the business of an entity that has a close business relationship with another person, for example, a relationship between a parent company and its subsidy or affiliated company, or a relationship of members of a group of companies that carry out product development projects under the same indication, or in other words, a trademark that has the likelihood of confusion in a broad sense.

2. Whether or not a trademark is likely to cause confusion as referred to in Article 4, paragraph (1), item (xv) of the Trademark Act should be determined comprehensively in light of factors such as the degree of similarity between the trademark and another person's indication, the degree of well-knowness, fame and creative nature of the other person's indication, and the degree of association between the designated goods or services of the trademark and the goods or services pertaining to the other person's business, as well as the commonality in terms of traders and consumers of goods or services and other circumstances of transactions. Furthermore, such determination should be made on the basis of the level of care that traders and consumers of the designated goods or services of the trademark normally have.

3. A registered trademark consisting of horizontally written katakana characters, "レールデュタン" (rērudyutan), for which goods including cosmetic utensils, body ornaments, hair ornaments, bags, and sacks are designated, falls under the category of trademark prescribed in Article 4, paragraph (1), item (xv) of the Trademark Act, given the following circumstances as described in the judgment: the registered trademark is identical in sound with the cited trademark and other trademarks that another company uses as indications for one of its perfumes; the cited trademark, etc. are well-known among traders who deal with perfumes and consumers who are interested in luxury perfumes and they have originality as trademarks, and said designated goods have a very close association with perfumes in terms of their primary use, that is, adorning women; and consumers of the goods related to the registered trademark and those of the goods related to the cited trademark, etc. mostly overlap.