Trademark Dispute between French Brand Cartier and a Pawnbroker finally comes to end!

11 Jan 2019

January 12,2019:

A Singapore-based pawnbroker MoneyMax applied to register the word ‘Love Gold’ with two Chinese characters as a Trademark. MoneyMax filed the application in January 2017 with the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) of Singapore.

This mark is being used in the stores and storefronts of MoneyMax. However, a French jewellery company Cartier opposed the application on the grounds of similarity between the applied-for marks and their marks. The Cartier's Trademark ‘Love’, where ‘o’ is replaced by a ‘‘slotted screw head’’ and ‘‘e’’ is in lower letters.

In their application, Cartier claimed that there are a lot of similarities between their Trademark and the applied-for Trademark. Their Trademark covers class 14, which includes jewellery and gold jewellery.

The mark was used for a ‘love bracelet’ by Cartier. In addition, they also claimed that the applied-for mark is not distinctive at all. According to the claim, the words ‘Love’ and ‘Gold’ only describe the goods and services offered by MoneyMax.

Further, Cartier claimed that there is a lot of resemblance between their marks and the mark applied by MoneyMax. However, Singapore IPO did not find any similarity between the marks and added that the slotted screw head and the small ‘e’ is not present in the applied marks. So, there is no similarity or a point of confusion between the marks at all.

On 20th December 2018, the Singapore IPO ruled in favour of MoneyMax. The found no similarity between the marks. They also ruled that MoneyMax's trademark is distinctive. They ruled that distinctiveness of the mark should not be broken into its component's parts. The words ‘Love’ and ‘Gold’ in a rectangular device with the Chinese characters makes MoneyMax’s mark distinctive. The Singapore IPO ordered Cartier to pay legal costs to MoneyMax.