The management of the Industrial Property Office must once again deal with the CZECH POINT trademark, which the office declared invalid in 2013. According to the Office, the company CZECH POINT 101 registered it speculatively in 2006, in connection with the project of public administration contact centers being prepared at that time.
According to the judgment of the Municipal Court in Prague, the Office had little evidence for such a conclusion, which has now been confirmed by the Supreme Administrative Court (SAC), ČTK found out from the official notice board.
The Ministry of the Interior filed a motion to declare the Czech Point trademark invalid. The company had previously sought financial compensation, which the ministry had intended from the beginning.
Although the Industrial Property Office found the interior to be true and declared the mark invalid, the Municipal Court in Prague subsequently granted the company’s lawsuit. The Ministry of the Interior and the Industrial Property Office turned to the NSS with a cassation complaint, but failed.
Indeed, according to the SAC, the management of the Office must check more thoroughly whether a private company acted in good faith when trying to register a trademark, ie whether or not it could have known that the state administration was preparing a large-scale project related to the Czech Point designation.
For example, it is not yet sufficiently proven in the file when the campaign connected with the designation of contact points of the state administration as Czech Points began. “This fact is crucial for the assessment of the matter,” says the SAC.
Czech Point, ie the Czech Submission Verification Information National Terminal, is a project aimed at reducing excessive bureaucracy between citizens and public administration. In one place, people can obtain and verify data from public and non-public information systems or officially verify documents and documents.
There are more than 7,000 Czech Point contact points in the Czech Republic, for example at municipal offices, Czech Post counters or notaries.
According to the database of the Industrial Property Office, the owner of the Czech Point, Czech POINT and CZECH POINT trademarks is now the Ministry of the Interior. The trademark originally registered by CZECH POINT 101 is registered as expired.
