German Bank Loses Color Trademark After Spanish, Austrian Banks Challenge

摘要

A German Federal Patent Court (BPatG) ruling invalidating a national bank's "red" color trademark highlights how high the burden of proof has become for German brand owners to successfully defend color marks, and serves a particularly heavy blow to the banking and finance sector, for which colors are pivotal to corporate brand identity even as the sector's breadth makes color trademarks particularly difficult to protect, attorneys told Bloomberg BNA on July 13.