MOSCOW, March 19 (RAPSI) - The Federal Service for Intellectual Property, Patents and Trademarks (Rospatent) has ruled in favor of Mozilla Firefox, the web browser, in a lawsuit to terminate the legal protection for the Firefox brand of the Moscow-based company SaleNames, according to the patent agency’s statement.

The disputed brand is an integrated logo that includes the word Firefox in Roman lettering and a stylized picture of a fox jumping down from the first letter of the word, where the letter “O” suggests the paw print of the fox, the regulator said.

According to Mozilla Foundation, it holds the rights to the Firefox trademark under Class 9 (scientific, nautical, surveying, photographic, cinematographic, optical, weighing, measuring, signaling, checking (supervision), life-saving and teaching apparatus and instruments) and Class 38 (telecommunications) of the Nice Classification of Goods and Services for the Purposes of the Registration of Marks.

Rospatent accepted the argument that the disputed trademark belonging to SaleNames is confusingly similar to the Firefox brand of the US communication company.

An analysis of the two trademarks concluded that they use an element that is phonetically and semantically identical and graphically similar.

The regulator said the semantic identity was due to the same idea, the fox. The graphic similarity is rooted in the use of similar elements in the Roman lettering.