Puma against Pumu

A trademark attorney is a specialist in trademark law who researches the availability of trademarks, looks for the best application strategies and protects their client’s trademarks. As a consultant, a trademark attorney sometimes has to restrain their client.

For example, there are trademark owners who want to take action against everything, even when there are no grounds for doing so. There are also companies who want to apply for a trademark even though this would obviously constitute an infringement. Advising a client against unwise applications or actions is part and parcel of being a trademark attorney and something we have to do. We are not consultants for nothing.

But it seems no such advice was given in a case involving the Pumu logo. You have only to look at it to see that this is a copy of the Puma logo. Despite this, an application for this European trademark was submitted by a Chinese company through an Italian trademark attorney.

Although regulations in China have become stricter, making it easier to take action against trademark applications submitted in bad faith, this is still a regular occurrence. Chinese companies have been finding their way to the European Trademarks Register more often in recent years. Unfortunately, they sometimes bring their passion for making imitations with them, which in this case led to a challenge which was inevitably won by Puma. It is all too clear that this Chinese company could have saved themselves both money and effort. Of course it is possible that the Italian trademark attorney did advise Pumu against this course of action, but they persisted nonetheless. But in a case as obvious as this one, it would clearly have been better if the trademark attorney had simply said no to their client.