2018.09.09

Vol.6（OASIS）

Appeal No.2016-17962

1. Summary

The similarity of services is a main point of this case. The Examiner judged as follows. The services of these marks clearly differ in contents of knowledge, and each of them is provided by their respective specialists. Therefore, as there are differences in features, providers and consumers between these services, they are not related to each other and hence should be dissimilar.

2. My comments

Under Japanese practice, the similarity of goods or services is predetermined and is hardly reversed. Teaching services in any filed is predetermined to be similar to one another despite completely different field, so the scope of protection is sometimes too broad. This case is valuable in terms of being a breakthrough against this problem. I hope that such a case will increase especially in the field of software.