The grounds of revocation found under EU and Maltese trademarks legislation : a study

Abstract

A trademark acts to differentiate between the goods and services of a company. It is the mark by means of which a business can attract and retain its client base and create value and growth. This ongoing growth of trade mark applications has been associated with an increase in expectations on the part of stakeholders for more simplified and efficient trade mark registration procedures. However this growth has also led to a situation where trademarks have remained not utilised, which in itself creates problems for this sector. It is for this reason that the grounds for revocation of trademarks, which will be dealt with in this study, are a key to keeping control over the situation. It is an accepted fact that trademarks, allow the public to differentiate between goods of numerous suppliers at the point of sale. This is useful. both from the point of view of the customer, but also from that of the brand owner. It is evident, that a registered trade mark has two complimentary qualities - one enabling a consumer to make a distinction between the goods from different sources and secondly, it is fundamentally important that the trade mark's owner retains the exclusivity to market goods or services protected by the mark. The Court of Justice of the European Union, has played an important role in the development of this particular area, relative to the grounds of revocation and has gone into this all important fields relating to trademarks, which has these two very important functions of protecting both the consumer's as well as the proprietor's rights. This dissertation will deal with an analysis of the grounds of revocation as distinct from the grounds of invalidation found in the EU Trademark Directive and Regulation and also in Chapter 416 of the Laws of Malta and implicitly examine their proprietary rights as a basis to enable this work to give a more detailed critical study of the important grounds of revocation.