Red Bull Fails To Block Trademark Registration In EU Over Logos That Aren't All That Similar

from the locking-horns dept

While it is by no means the most litigious beverage company ever, Red Bull is not a complete stranger to trademark bullying. The last we heard from the iconic energy drink company, it was making legal arguments over bovines and their castrated status somehow rising to the level of trademark infringement. It seems that Red Bull typically likes to do its bullying during the trademark application status rather than in legal proceedings, but the universe is currently running an experiment to see just how hard and fast a rule this is for the company.

That experiment takes the form of Red Bull attempting, and failing, to oppose the trademark registration for a beverage company called "Big Horn" over the following logos.

Now, the link above is from a site dedicated to "brand protection", so all of the language in the post is of the variety that thinks Red Bull was totally right and the decision against the opposition was wrong. But, come on, how much public confusion is there really going to be over those logos? To be fair to that original post, it points out that Big Horn uses this logo on beverage cans that do call back to Red Bull's, but Red Bull didn't make that argument in its opposition. Instead, it simply argued that the logos were too similar. They're not, even when you try to parse things out with language such as:

Red Bull based its opposition on the registration of the two bulls logo, i.e. without the word Red Bull. If you compare this with the Big Horn logo they are quite similar, given that both depict two animals leaping towards each other with a yellow ball in the background.

"Yellow ball." That's the sun, actually. In the case of the Big Horn logo, it's the sun rising over mountains, which aren't present in Red Bull's logo. And the animals in question are different. As are the color schemes. Not to mention that Big Horn has their big name pasted in big letters over the logo. It makes perfect sense that EUIPO thought that Big Horn had enough of a case if this ever goes to a trademark lawsuit to defend itself, no matter how many citations of EUIPO making the opposite and wrong decision on Red Bull oppositions the original post can make.

So, we'll wait and see if Red Bull actually wants to take this trial. If that happens, I would think that demonstrating real or potential public confusion would be pretty difficult.

Filed Under: eu, europe, trademark
Companies: big horn, red bull