Chewing gum company sought to register trademark “doublemint” in relation to a chewing gum.
“Doublemint” simply indicated a doubling of mint flavour
The two individual words themselves were descriptive
And word as a whole was no different from sum of its parts
I.e. as only difference was that space between words had been subtracted
Thus was descriptive of goods characteristics
Mark is excluded if at least one of its possible meanings is descriptive of goods, even if some of its other possible meanings are not descriptive
Thus fact that there is ambiguity as to nature of mint involved (peppermint, spearmint) is irrelevant.
Trade mark may be refused even if mark is not actually descriptive of goods at time of application
Provided that it could be used for descriptive purposes
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Intellectual Property Law | Trademarks 1 Cases (9 pages) |