Press release 08.08.2011 (V českém jazyce – Konec CzechPOINTů?)
CZECH POINT 101, a real estate and property management company operating in the Czech Republic since 2003, has filed a lawsuit against the Czech government for trademark infringement (Municipal Court in Prague ref.n. 41 Cm 12/2011). The company wants the government to stop using “CzechPOINT” as the name of their document and legal services offices.
The Czech government registered their CzechPOINT trademark after CZECH POINT 101.
CZECH POINT 101 registered the trademark “CZECH POINT’ in the Czech Republic in 2006. In 2007 the national government registered a ‘CzechPOINT’ trademark and began a massive rollout of offices which provide services such as verified signatures, Land Registry statements, company excerpt and criminal records in an attempt to simplify bureaucracy. The offices and signs are now found in over 6,500 locations country-wide with plans to roll out many more. CZECH POINT 101 believes the use of this name violates their trademark.
“We purchased the intellectual property in 2006 and feel that the government moved onto our property in 2007 and started using it without our permission,” said Nathan Brown, owner of CZECH POINT 101. “We have been trying to get them to either pay some rent or move off our property but they have not made any offers to date. Now we are forced to go through the courts to evict them. It is a sad situation that we sometimes deal with in connection with our tenants but I never expected it of the national government.”
The claim of CZECH POINT 101 is not just fiction, confirms lawyer JUDr. Radim Charvat, PhD, LLM, a legal expert in Czech Republic trademark law, being a lecturer on the subject at the Law Faculty of Masaryk University in Brno: “From the available information, it appears that in the case of the trademarks of CZECH POINT 101 and the later registered trademarks used by the Ministry of Interior, there could indeed lead to induction of the likelihood of confusion, and if such, it would interfere with the rights of CZECH POINT 101 according to § 8 paragraph 2 point. b) of the Trademark Act. If this was also confirmed by an independent court in the Czech Republic, the Court could also decide to ban the Czech Republic (Ministry of Interior) using the designation CzechPOINT on their terminals. “
The government attempted to register their trademark at the EU level (in the trademark registry OHIM) in 2008 but was opposed by CZECH POINT 101 in this application. The opposition was successful on many levels and OHIM refused to register the trademark of the Czech government for a number of business activities. The decision was appealed by the Czech government but the appeal committee upheld the initial decision. OHIM ordered the Czech government to pay the legal fees of CZECH POINT 101 in the appeal, but this money is still outstanding.
For more information, please contact Nathan Brown, +43 680 334 24 33, nathan@czechpoint101.com.
Updated/Aktualizováno: December 4, 2014,
