Rejection 2023-018010 (JP Appl. No. 2022-141811)

The applied-for-trademark consists of English letter string “SD-G” in Standard characters. Upon appeal, the JPO Appeal Examiners could not determine that the applied-for-trademark consists solely of a very simple and common mark in structure.

In addition,  it was found that even though there is an argument that marks combining Roman letters and Roman or Arabic numeral(s) with a ‘-’ (hyphen) are typically adopted and used as a type of signs or symbols to indicate the standard, model, part number, etc. of specific goods in trade, the Appeal Examiners were unable to find facts to determine that “SD-G” or similarly structured characters (consisting of two Roman alphabets and one Roman alphabet with a hyphen) are commonly used as a type of signs or symbols to indicate the standard, etc. in trade to say that such marks consist solely of a very simple and common mark in the fields of the designated goods through ex-officio searches.  Further, the Appeal Examiners were unable to find circumstances in which traders and consumers of the designated goods would recognize that the applied-for-trademark consists solely of a very simple and common mark.

With the above in mind, the Appeal Examiners could not determine that the applied-for-trademark consists solely of a very simple and common mark in structure.

Thus, the applied-for-trademark should be registered.

The applicant recited the following earlier registered trademarks to indicate that marks combining two Roman letters and one Roman letter with a ‘-’ (hyphen) have been accepted and registered in identical/similar fields of the designated goods in Class 6:

•  NJ-X (Standard characters);
•  CT-J;
• -GP-N; and
•  AT-T