{"id":82,"date":"2023-03-16T03:43:12","date_gmt":"2023-03-16T03:43:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wallington-dummer.com\/blog\/?p=82"},"modified":"2023-03-16T03:43:12","modified_gmt":"2023-03-16T03:43:12","slug":"scandalous-trade-marks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wallington-dummer.com\/blog\/scandalous-trade-marks\/","title":{"rendered":"Scandalous Trade Marks"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><em>By Jennifer Song \/ Senior Associate<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In Australia, an application for the registration of a trade mark must be rejected if the trade mark \u201ccontains or consists of scandalous matter\u201d. The test as to whether a trade mark is &#8220;scandalous matter&#8221; can be summarised as: &#8220;Will it shock the ordinary customer for the relevant goods\/services?&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Thus, what is &#8220;scandalous matter&#8221; is a matter of opinion and can change&nbsp;over time. In the past, trade marks containing offensive racial terms were registered but would not be registrable today. On the other hand, religious terms such as &#8220;Jesus&#8221; and &#8220;Hallelujah&#8221; have been rejected in the past but have now been permitted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It&nbsp;appears that in Australia, the threshold for what is shocking and thus &#8220;scandalous matter&#8221; is quite high and&nbsp;many words\/terms may be considered as being bad taste, but not &#8220;scandalous matter&#8221; and thus, registrable.<br><br>Several trade marks that contain words phonetically similar to &#8220;FUCK&#8221; have been registered:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>&#8220;HEDFUK&#8221;;<\/li><li>&#8220;FARKEN ORSUM&#8221;;<\/li><li>&#8220;FARKOFF&#8221;;<\/li><li>&#8220;UNFKNBLVBLE!&#8221;;<\/li><li>&#8220;FAR KEW&#8221;.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>However, the misspelt &#8220;CNUT&#8221; has been registered although numerous applications for &#8220;KUNT&#8221; have been refused over the years. The word &#8220;ASSHOLE&#8221; has been registered.<br>In 2003, the Australian Trade Marks Office found that the phrase &#8220;LOOK GOOD FEEL GOOD = ROOT GOOD&#8221; in respect of cosmetics and sexual hygiene products was registrable as the phrase was considered not likely to cause a significant degree of shock, despite being crude in sentiment.<br>In 2011, the Australian Trade Marks Office found that the mark &#8220;POMMIEBASHER&#8221; was not &#8220;scandalous matter&#8221;. The Delegate concluded that the mark was &#8220;part of ordinary and acceptable, if colourful and colloquial, language&#8221;.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><br>Do you have a scandalous trade mark you wish to use and register as a trade mark in Australia? Now may be a better time than ever to lodge the scandalous trade mark with the Australian Trade Marks Office.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Jennifer Song \/ Senior Associate In Australia, an application for the registration of a trade mark must be rejected if the trade mark \u201ccontains or consists of scandalous matter\u201d. The test as to whether a trade mark is &#8220;scandalous matter&#8221; can be summarised as: &#8220;Will it shock the ordinary&hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/wallington-dummer.com\/blog\/scandalous-trade-marks\/\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-82","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wallington-dummer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wallington-dummer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wallington-dummer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wallington-dummer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wallington-dummer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=82"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wallington-dummer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":83,"href":"https:\/\/wallington-dummer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82\/revisions\/83"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wallington-dummer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wallington-dummer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wallington-dummer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}