Overcoming a lower court decision, Japan’s Intellectual Property High Court has ruled that Coca-Cola’s familiar bottle can be registered as a trademark. This is the first time that a three-dimensional trademark for a container without any lettering or graphic symbol has been allowed in Japan.
Chief Judge Mr. Toshiaki Limura based his decision on Coca-Cola’s bottle being “within the scope of familiar shape”, and pointed out that in Japan, Coca-Cola has been sold consistently in bottles of the same shape since 1957 with sales of nearly 100 million bottles a year, that Coca-Cola pours 3 billion yen a year into advertising, and that the bottle is unique and easily distinguished from other products since the shape of the bottle itself is recognized as the brand image.
The decision gells with a recent Israel Trademark Office guideline (based on a mis-reading of a court ruling concerning Toffiffee), where the Israel Commissioner of Patents and trademarks ruled not to allow 3D packaging to be registered as trademarks unless, through time they achieved a distinctiveness.
