الحماية المدنية للعلامة التجارية في القانون اليمني

Abstract EN

The study deals with the issue of civil protection of a trademark in Yemeni Law and clarifies the necessary conditions for its protection.

This issue raises several questions such as: what a trademark is? Which trademark is covered by law protection? The trademark is now associated with an important aspect of the individuals' dealings.

It represents the trust upon which these individuals deal with the producer, distributor or service provider irrespective of the production.

The brand has become a link between producers and consumers.

The study aims to give a defination for a trademark and identifies the means and mechanisms of civil protection in Yemeni Law.

Descriptive and analytical approaches are used in this study which is devided into three sections showing several results.

One of the most important ones is the deficiency of trademark registration procedures and the inadequacy, in practice, of the relevant legal dates/deadlines.

The trademark registration is a presumption of ownership unless a third party is able to prove at court the primacy and precedence of the mark's use within five years claiming the invalidity of the other's mark ownership.

The civil protection of the trademark is claimed by filing a lawsuit on illegal competition in case of imitating or using the trademark and in the case of requesting for the precautionary measures.

The study recommends that the contradiction of ownership legal provisions of a trademark must be removed as they assert that the trademark's ownership goes by precedence of its use and its protection is cancelled after ten years if the mark's registration is not renewed.

It also recommends some solutions to avoid the deficiencies found in the legal periods specified for: filing a complain or suit, the period of registration in which the applicant should be notified of the registrar's decision or of the existence of an objection to registrarion.