IP Court: descriptiveness must be assessed for each individual service

📎 Case link: https://kad.arbitr.ru/Card/b4cb4d90-3eb3-44ab-8c43-fea6d4e9c17c

The Supreme Court of the Russian Federation declined to review case SIP-1387/2024, thereby confirming the IP Court's position that a disputed designation must be analysed in relation to each specific service in Class 35.

The dispute arose from the registration of a combined mark, where Rospatent considered the verbal element “BIOMEDICA” non-protectable due to its alleged descriptiveness.

📌 IP Court's view
The Court indicated that:

• many Class 35 service descriptions are broad and heterogeneous,

• services under the same Nice class may differ substantially in nature,

• a term may be perceived as fanciful, descriptive, or misleading depending on the actual content of the service.

📌 What Rospatent must do
The Presidium instructed the Office to:

• provide service-specific reasoning,

• explain what associations the consumer forms,

• and justify how these associations relate to the type, characteristics or purpose of each service.

💡 The Supreme Court refused to transfer the complaint for further review, leaving the IP Court’s approach intact. Rospatent must re-examine the opposition accordingly.