MOSCOW, May 30 (RAPSI) – Russia’s Chamber for Patent Disputes has upheld the decision to refuse US  A&E Television Networks, LLC (owns History TV Channel) to register a trademark combining letter “H” and word “History”, according to the agency’s documents.

The Russian Federal Service for Intellectual Property (Rospatent) deems that the subject combined identification is confusingly similar to the previously registered trademark of OOO Viasat Holding (History Channel broadcaster). An expert examination concluded that the similarity of these two trademarks was determined by the use of word “History” dominating both identifications and by their general composition.

A&E Television Networks did not agree with Rospatent’s decision, insisting that the matched against each other trademarks are not confusingly similar since they differ in their phonetic, semantic, and visual characteristics. The attention-getting and memorable graphics in the trademarks make different impression on customers and allow them to unerringly distinguish these identifications among other identifications of similar services.   

Besides, according to the US company, the fact that in addition to word “History” another trademark incorporates word “Viasat” as the brand name of its owner Viasat Holding permits customers to distinguish between the two identifications matched against each other.