Coaster Hipster
Giga Poster
As previously mentioned here a few months back Phantasialand have been having issues with trademarking the name 'F.L.Y.'
2 companies (a German bicycle firm + Portuguese jewellery firm) complained on the grounds of possibility of confusion with products or theirs.
http://euipo.europa.eu/eSearch/#details/trademarks/016873135
Over the past year according to the EUIPO website there has been correspondence between the parties involved; presumably as the park tried to negotiate with them - but it was seemingly unsuccessful because a few days back, on the 16th November, the EUIPO issued a "notice of ground for refusal of an application".
The article referenced:
Rule 11 : Examination as to absolute grounds for refusal
(1) Where, pursuant to Article 7 of the Regulation, the trade mark may not be registered for all or any part of the goods or services applied for, the office shall notify the applicant of the grounds for refusing registration. The Office shall specify a period within which the applicant may withdraw or amend the application or submit his observations. ...'
If I'm understanding this all correctly it seems quite unlikely they will be successful in getting the name F.L.Y. trademarked.
The park have been given 2 months to amend or withdraw the application but since the issue is the name itself I doubt there's much that can be done (especially after 11 months of correspondence with the opponents) other than change the name?
So will we be seeing soon a new name for the coaster? Or will they still be able to find some way to resolve the situation?
Either way I hope its sorted soon so they can start marketing/teasing this thing!
Wouldn't there be a way to work around this by adding a little modification to the trademark application like:
"© F.L.Y. Flying Launch Coaster"
"© F.L.Y. The Steampunk Flyer"
Or anything along those lines? I'm definitely not your go-to authority regarding IP and copyright policies but wouldn't that be a reasonable compromise to said German and Portugese companies?
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