[Trademark] Case No. 2025 (Gyo-ke) 10066
Updated: 4 hours ago
Article information
Categories: Trademarks
Topics: Similarity of trademarks / Well-known and famous marks
Published on this website: 2026-09-29
[Trademark] Case No. 2025 (Gyo-ke) 10066
[AFURI / Afuri] (Presiding Judge Hasegawa)
⇒ Similar (violation of Article 4(1)(xi) of the Trademark Act).
(1) Similarity of concept:
The word "AFURI" has a certain degree of recognition in the plaintiff's ramen business. In relation to manufacturing and selling alcoholic beverages, however, sufficient advertising and sales results cannot be confirmed, so it cannot be said to give rise to the concept of that brand.
Although "Afuri" is not in dictionaries, it is used as a name for Mount Afuri—another name for Mount Oyama in central Kanagawa Prefecture—and the surrounding area. The cited trademark "Afuri Oyama" also evokes Mount Afuri as a whole, and the two trademarks have a certain degree of conceptual similarity.
(2) Similarity of appearance:
The trademark at issue presents Roman letters and kanji in two tiers, but the coined-word-like kanji "阿夫利" give a strong, dominant impression as a source identifier.
In the cited trademark, too, it is difficult to think that the common kanji "大山" strongly attract the attention of traders and consumers.
The two marks, containing common kanji, therefore have a certain degree of visual similarity.
(3) Similarity of pronunciation:
The trademark at issue produces the pronunciation "Afuri," and the cited trademark "Afuri Oyama."
Although the overall pronunciations differ, they share "Afuri" at the beginning, which is important for identification, and thus also have a certain degree of phonetic similarity.
(4) Overall assessment:
They have a certain degree of similarity in appearance, pronunciation and concept. Considering also that the shared characters "阿夫利" are a distinctive word, they are similar trademarks likely to cause consumers of the designated goods subject to invalidation to mistake or confuse the source of the goods.
The plaintiff (AFURI) had filed trademark infringement litigation against the sake "Afuri" (雨降) sold by the defendant (Yoshikawa Jozo).
The defendant requested an invalidation trial against the plaintiff's "AFURI / 阿夫利" trademark for alcoholic beverages, arguing similarity to the cited trademark "阿夫利大山."
⇒ The Japan Patent Office accepted the defendant's argument and invalidated the plaintiff's trademark for alcoholic beverages.
⇒ This judgment upheld the Patent Office's determination. (Even if the plaintiff was well known in the ramen industry, it was not well known for alcoholic beverages.)
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