Trademark basics you need for Demarka

Demarka’s reports use a small vocabulary borrowed from trademark practice. This page explains just enough of it to read them confidently.

A trademark protects a sign for specific goods and services

Registering a name does not give you the name everywhere and for everything. It gives you the right to stop others using a confusingly similar sign for the goods and services you registered, in the country where you registered.

That is why every search and every assessment asks for two things beyond the name itself: which classes, and which countries.

NICE classes

The Nice Classification sorts all goods and services into 45 numbered classes — 1 to 34 for goods, 35 to 45 for services. Class 25 is clothing; class 35 is advertising and retail; class 42 is software development, and so on.

Two identical names in unrelated classes can usually coexist. Two similar names in the same or neighbouring classes usually cannot. Choosing your classes therefore shapes your entire result: too narrow and you leave gaps, too broad and you pay more and invite more conflicts.

Absolute grounds

Absolute grounds are objections to the mark in itself, regardless of who else exists. An examiner raises them on their own initiative. The common ones:

• Not distinctive — the sign does not work as a badge of origin.
• Descriptive — it simply describes the goods, their quality, purpose or origin (“Fresh Bread” for bakeries).
• Deceptive — it misleads about the nature, quality or geographical origin of the goods.
• Public order or morality — offensive or otherwise unacceptable signs.
• Prohibited elements — flags, state emblems, official hallmarks.
• Geographical indications, personality rights, well-known marks and, in some countries, surname significance.

Demarka checks all of these per jurisdiction, with local cultural and linguistic context — a word that is meaningless in English may be descriptive or offensive in another language.

The distinctiveness scale

Reports place your mark on a five-point scale, from weakest to strongest:

Generic → Descriptive → Suggestive → Arbitrary → Fanciful.

Generic and descriptive marks struggle. Suggestive marks hint at the product without describing it. Arbitrary marks are real words used for unrelated goods (Apple for computers). Fanciful marks are invented (Kodak). The further right you sit, the easier registration is — and the stronger your protection afterwards.

Relative grounds

Relative grounds are objections based on someone else’s earlier right — a mark that is identical or confusingly similar, for identical or related goods. This is what the similar-marks part of an assessment is about.

Similarity is assessed on three axes, which Demarka reports separately:

• Visual — how alike they look.
• Phonetic — how alike they sound when spoken.
• Conceptual — whether they convey the same idea.

Plus the goods overlap: identical, related or unrelated.

Provisional refusal versus opposition

This distinction decides how a conflict reaches you, and it varies by country.

• In some jurisdictions the office searches earlier marks itself and raises them against you. The result is a provisional refusal — an official objection you can answer, narrow your goods around, or overcome with a coexistence agreement. It is provisional precisely because it can be overcome.
• In others the office only examines absolute grounds. Your mark is published, and an earlier owner has a window to file an opposition. No opposition, no obstacle — but you cannot know in advance whether they will act.

Demarka knows which regime applies in each country and words the report accordingly. A “Critical” outlook in an opposition country means “someone has strong grounds to attack this if they notice”; in an examination country it means “the office will very likely raise this itself”.

Applications versus registrations

A pending application is not yet a right, but it is a warning: if it registers, it will predate yours. Demarka shows both, with the status on every result card, so you can weigh them differently.