[Trademark Act, Article 3(1)(iii)] IP High Court, Case No. 2025 (Gyo-ke) 10070

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Article information

Article type: Case note

Display and classification checked: 2026-09-30

Categories: Trademarks

Topics: Distinctiveness

Published on this website: 2026-09-29

[Trademark Act, Article 3(1)(iii)] IP High Court, Case No. 2025 (Gyo-ke) 10070

[Ethical Grain] (Presiding Judge Masuda)

The Japan Patent Office consistently wrote and interpreted "logical" (ronriteki), where it should have said "ethical" (rinriteki), in the core of its determination!!

⇒ Trial decision revoked.

(Excerpt from the judgment — translated)

Although the trial decision found in its determination that the katakana term “エシカル” (eshikaru) means “ethical,” etc., in the subsequent examples of use of “エシカル” and its examination of the trademark, it held that the characters “エシカル” give rise to the meaning "logical," and found, among other things, that the entire composition of the trademark gives rise to a vague meaning of approximately "logical grain." It therefore did not correctly examine the concept arising from the composition of the trademark.

https://lnkd.in/gai5kmKS

https://lnkd.in/gisvUe3a

hanrei-pdf-95278.pdf — courts.go.jp

Originally posted on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7510139550552252416/

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Shared topic: Distinctiveness — [Article / Trademarks] Similarity of composite marks containing place names for the service “providing food and drink” (Shoji Nakamura, Patent, March 2024)

Shared topic: Distinctiveness — [Trademark] IP High Court, Case No. 2025 (Gyo-ke) 10072

Updates and corrections

This log starts on 30 September 2026. Display and classification checks are distinct from a review of the legal analysis.

2026-09-30 — Presentation update: added the article type, this change log and a link to consultation options. The existing article text was preserved.

2026-10-01 | Name notation: replaced verified Japanese-script personal names with Roman-letter forms in this English article and its navigation. Legal analysis and original publication date unchanged.

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