KING Entertainment Co., Ltd filed in 2019 an application for trademark „Funky Galaxy“ in Japan for Nice classes: 9 (telecommunication machines and apparatus; personal digital assistants; smartphones; electronic machines, and apparatus and their parts.), 16, 35, and 41.
One of the biggest smartphone manufacturers in the world Samsung filed an opposition against this application based on several earlier marks for GALAXY in classes 9, 35 и 41.
According to the company, both signs were confusingly similar especially in the light of the fact that Samsung’s Galaxy phones were some of the most well-sold phones in Japan.
The Patent Office, however, dismissed the opposition in its entirety. Although the Office acknowledged Samsung’s reputation for its Galaxy brand in the country, it found both signs as dissimilar from a phonetic and visual point of view due to the first element in the mark applied for FUNKY.
Conceptually both marks were not similar too because the latter sign has no specific meaning for the consumers in the country while the earlier marks are related to the term Galaxy as a huge space of stars and planets.
