العلامات التجارية : قراءة في أصول الحماية و معاييرها

الملخص EN

Trade marks have become a very important tool of commerce, and legislations have, as such, become concerned with protecting trade marks against counterfeiting.

Consequently, courts have formed criteria designed to identify counterfeiting, in order to enable the application of the provisions of protection.

This article touches on the historical development of trade marks, the role they perform, and the interests that trade marks are expected to protect, namely that of the trademark owner and the consumer.

This required a research into the means to protect said interest, as provided for by legislation, most importantly preventing the registration or use of a trademark similar to another protected one.

The current criteria to determine counterfeiting and similarity is, in fact, capable of showing similarity or the lack of it.

However, such criteria are incapable of determining whether registration or usage of a trade mark similar to another, that is protected, should be prevented, because such criteria are incapable of determining the kind of similarity or counterfeiting that actually causes actionable confusion to the public.

Therefore, this article suggests and discusses the usage of two more other additional criteria.