Uber wins against an individual wanting to get his Trademark ChefUber registered after The UK Intellectual Property Office (IPO) sided with Uber after the multinational transportation network company opposed a trademark that it said would be expected to cause confusion with its own.
Tim Mackew wanted to register the mark in class 35 for numerous employment services for the catering business, nonetheless this was objected by Uber on the grounds that it has a number of its former trademarks are also registered in the similar class.
The opposition by Uber were based on two trademarks for the word Uber and its services UberEats it said that there was a point of theoretical resemblance between ChefUber and the fact that both the marks possess the food-based association respectively.
Mackew in his defence had argued that ChefUber is a matching service for independent or freelance chefs and hospitality organisations but the IPO held that Uber and ChefUber both comprise the staffing and appointment of peoples and that there is a resemblance of purpose.
Additionally, while Mackew had argued that the addition of the word element ‘Chef’ in his applied-for mark makes it distinctive from Uber’s earlier trademarks, the IPO said that neither word in ‘ChefUber’ stands out more than the other.
The IPO said that from a visual and audio perspective, the high degree of similarity is undeniable of the word Uber between both the former and applied-for mark. It was also noted by the IPO that a man of an average intelligence may or may not observe the key difference between ChefUber and Uber, if he did there might still be a likelihood of indirect confusion.
Uber argued that Chef is a descriptive word and merely merging it with ‘Uber’ would in no way stop customers from being confused and would nevertheless lead to an assumption of commercial association between Uber and ChefUber.
Uber being a very reputed company there is a chance that ChefUber might take advantage of the same because the average customer would assume that the services offered by Uber and ChefUber operate and work in the similar manner.
IPO issued its decision on Monday stating that opposition filed by Uber was successful and Tim Mackew, could not register the mark ChefUber as it was denied.