Goods: Cartridges for water purifying apparatus<\/p>\n
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Defendant’s mark and other indications<\/p>\n
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The defendant had used indication 1 and has gotten to use indication 2. When a user clicks indications 1 and 2 of the search results displays in the internet shopping mall or\u00a0<\/span>Google<\/a>, the user links to the defendant\u2019s\u00a0<\/span>website<\/a>.<\/p>\n The part \u201c\u30bf\u30ab\u30ae\u201d of indications 1 and 2 should be famous as the plaintiff\u2019s trademark, which is one of the requirements for an infringement under the Unfair Competition Prevention Law. The other requirements are that (1) indications 1 and 2 are used as the indication of source of plaintiff and (2) there is a likelihood of confusion between the plaintiff\u2019s goods and defendant\u2019s goods.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Indication 1<\/strong><\/p>\n (1) use as the indication of source<\/p>\n Indication 1 should be understood as the indication of source of the plaintiff. The defendant asserted that indication 1 should not be used for indicating the source based on the fact that the indication \u201cThe interchangeable cartridge for replacement\u201d of indication 1 and the IAC are shown and that the picture of the product does not indicate the plaintiff\u2019s product. However, this assertion was rejected for the following reasons.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u00a0(2) Likelihood of confusion<\/p>\n If the consumers see the defendant\u2019s\u00a0<\/span>website<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>via the search results displays in the internet shopping mall or\u00a0<\/span>Google<\/a>, they may confuse the goods between the plaintiff\u2019s goods and defendant\u2019s goods. This confusion might not be resolved even though the defendant\u2019s\u00a0<\/span>website<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>has a notice that the defendant\u2019s product is not the plaintiff\u2019s product. Actually, some consumers who confused the products inquired or complained to the plaintiff. Therefore, there should be a likelihood of confusion of the goods between the plaintiff and the defendant. \u00a0<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Indication 2<\/strong><\/p>\n Consumers can understand that the defendant\u2019s product is used for Takagi\u2019s product by indication 2, which is the explanation about the content of the product. Therefore, indication 2 should not be recognized as the indication of source for the product. Thus, the use of indication 2 does not fall within the Unfair Competition.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The court\u2019s judgements varied depending on the difference between indications 1 and 2 in whether they can be recognized as the explanations. In addition, this case teaches us how the indication to avoid confusion (IAC) is shown has influence on the result. In the reason for the judgments, the following fact leads to likelihood of confusion. Even though the IAC was indicated in the defendant\u2019s\u00a0<\/span>website<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>where consumers can eventually buy the defendant\u2019s goods, there is a fact that the IAC was not shown in the search result of Rakuten and was shown by smaller letters than indication 1 in the search result display of\u00a0<\/span>Google<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Incidentally, the court did not judge about the assertion based on the trademark right of the plaintiff because the assertion has been already accepted based on the Unfair Competition Prevention Law. If the IAC had been conspicuously shown in the search result displays and the defendant\u2019s websites, what conclusion would have been reached? The court might have judged the use of indication 1 not to be infringement based on the requirement \u201clikelihood of confusion\u201d under the Unfair Competition Prevention Law. On the other hand, the use of indication 1 could have infringed the plaintiff\u2019s trademark right because \u201clikelihood of confusion\u201d is not a requirement under the Trademark Law.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" H29 (wa) 14637 Plaintiff\u2019s mark\u3000\u3000\u3000\u3000\u3000\u3000\u3000\u3000\u3000\u3000\u3000\u3000\u3000\u3000\u3000\u3000 \u00a0 \u30bf\u30ab\u30ae\u00a0(This can be transliterated into \u201cTakagi\u201d and is … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bran-design.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bran-design.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bran-design.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bran-design.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bran-design.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=282"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/bran-design.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":974,"href":"https:\/\/bran-design.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282\/revisions\/974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bran-design.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bran-design.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bran-design.jp\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
Conclusion<\/h3>\n
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Summary<\/h3>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
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My comments<\/h3>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n