The “Aone” – Audi”
February 24, 2017
Biswajit Sarkar - IP Law Firm India
Post time: 9:32 am
The Courts and registries are nowadays burdened with legal battles over “spare parts”. This time a registered trade mark is in question in the Court of Singapore in the case of AUDI AG v Lim Ching Kwang.
In the court of Singapore the German car manufacturer AUDI applied for revocation of the stylized and registered trade mark of Lim “Aone” a spare parts trader. The trade mark is registered in Class 7 and 12. But the instant case only deals with Class 12. The revocation application involves the question whether the mark has been used or is used genuinely by the registered proprietor. Considering all the evidences namely, the emails, packaging boxes, invoices, pictures and other relevant evidences, the Court came to the conclusion that the mark is in use with respect to torque rod bushes.
The Court rejected the argument of AUDI that the evidences laid down do not constitute usage of the mark. The packaging label and the emails having the mark is not sufficient to prove usage at the relevant period of time. They argued that evidence must be considered in totality and not in isolation. The plaintiff even refused to to take into account the “Aone” stickers shipped to Singapore as an evidence of usage. As a matter of fact Lim failed to prove use of the mark in respect to all the goods in class 12. Therefore, AUDI was successful in revoking the registrations save alone the torque rod bushes.
The invalidation action filed by AUDI has to decide if the application was based on bad faith. As Lim’s specification was too broad, AUDI argued it is not possible to use the mark for all goods falling under class 12 of NICE Classification. The Court is of the view that it is not illegal to file application for all the goods under a single class for present as well as future use.
The length and breadth of specification do not determine the bad faith of an application. But the non-use of the mark intentionally amounts to bad faith of the applicant. Therefore, AUDI failed to establish the claim of bad faith with high standard of proof and failed in the invalidation action.
