The IP Factor

The Israel National Lottery have a family of trademarks that variously appear on their tickets, kiosks selling tickets, on sports and cultural facilities bought with profits from the sweepstake and in their heavy advertising campaign.

There are several variations of the mark which is well-known as there are regularly queues of people, particularly with limited income that don’t understand the odds and who pay this voluntary tax that they can’t afford. 

The mark consists of a stylized star in a swirl that is essentially a stylized letter “פ” the hebrew for P, standing for Payis – or lottery.

Anyway,  filed Israel trademark application no. TM 197111 for their logo as above.

The marks coexisted for a while, and Starwood apparently had previously registered a mark that had lapsed by clerical error only and this was a refiling. The marks are in different classes and the goods are dissimilar. However, there is some overlap, and Mifal haPayis does provide leisure facilities, sports halls, etc.  

because the dominant features were the same, there is a likelihood of confusion and dilution. Mifal HaPayis successfully opposed the mark and were awarded 30,000 NIS damages and 10,000 NIS costs. 

Since there is an overlap between the types of facilities that Mifal HaPayis’ sponsors and the services provided by the decision seems reasonable.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 13th, 2010 at 10:07 am and is filed under famous marks, Intellectual Property, Israel Patent Office Rulings, Israel Related, Israel Trademark, trademarks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.