‘Turkaegean’ trademark struggle

The Turkey Tourism Promotion and Development Organization is struggling to beryllium the “Turkaegean” trademark does not see geographical indications and, therefore, that the determination to cancel it by the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) should beryllium rejected.

On March 7 the Turkish enactment appealed against the determination by which the EUIPO connected January 10 canceled the “Turkaegean” trademark, which had been registered for use within the EU by the Turkish Tourism Organization since December 16, 2021.

However, according to estimates by ineligible and marketplace sources with cognition of trademark issues, the information that the entreaty process has not progressed to a 2nd circular of requests for observations strongly suggests it will beryllium rejected.

The Greek broadside sent its observations connected the allegations made by Turkey connected August 25. Interestingly, the Turkish enactment changed its ineligible typical erstwhile again aft the determination to cancel the “Turkaegean” trademark, with the Spanish institution Elzaburu (since May 5) being the third successful a enactment to take connected the lawsuit connected behalf of the Turks.

One of the main reasons for the cancellation of “Turkaegean” was the information it contains strong geographical indications, which conflicts with EU instrumentality connected trademark registration. According to the EUIPO decision, the “Turkaegean” trademark is perceived by the English-speaking nationalist of the EU arsenic the Turkish portion of the Aegean. 

The main statement successful the entreaty text attempts to overturn that point: “The term Turkaegean is an archetypal neologism created for my lawsuit and which is successful nary way portion of the communal oregon customary connection of the applicable consumers, and impervious of this is that, arsenic has already been established astatine archetypal instance, it is not recovered successful immoderate dictionary of immoderate of the languages spoken successful the EU,” states the text sent to the EUIPO connected May 12.

In the aforesaid 72-page text, it adjacent attempts to reason that the word “Turk” does not needfully person a geographical designation, arsenic it tin notation to anyone successful Central Asia who speaks Turkish and is for illustration from Turkmenistan, to a breed of equine from Turkey, and adjacent to a violent person.