February 26, 2009, the Section of Appeals of the State Patent Bureau has dismissed the oppositions No. 2176, 2177 of the interested person Zero Holding GmbH & Co. Kg against the validation of trademarks „NERO“ (Reg. No. 56217) and „NERO walk the walk“ (Reg. No. 56216) owned ABC KING, AS.
The Section of Appeals stated that the opposed trademark is compounded of the word “NERO” in capital Latin letters and also is put into a black rectangular. The opposed trademark “NERO walk the walk” is compounded of several verbal elements: “NERO” and “walk the walk”. In addition the word “NERO” is also put into a black rectangular. The Community trademark of the interested person “zero” is a verbal trademark. Comparable marks have particular visual similarity but phonetically they are not similar due to the different pronunciation. Moreover the word “NERO” is Italian word and means “black”, but presumptively Lithuanian consumers will understand it as an artificial word and without any meaning. Therefore trademarks were recognized as not similar due to the phonetic and semantic differences of the main elements “zero” and “NERO”.