IP Court decides in favor of Home Hotel in the trademark lawsuit

A local hotel business operator, Home Hotel Co., Ltd. runs the Home Hotel under its “H” design mark in Xinyi District of Taipei City (hereinafter “Home Hotel”) and has successfully registered with Taiwan IPO the “H” design mark as a trademark and designated it for use in the services of food and drink catering and hotel accommodation (hereinafter “Home Hotel’s “H” design mark”).  However, the US-based Six Continents Hotels, Inc. unsuccessfully opposed the registration of Home Hotel’s “H” design mark on the ground that the “H” design mark is similar to Six Continents’ “H” logo and both Home Hotel and Six Continents are in the hotel business.  After the unsuccessful opposition, Six Continents filed an administrative appeal with the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) and the appeal turned out successful, for which Home Hotel initiated an administrative action with the IP Court accordingly. 

According to the IP Court’s holding, Home Hotel’s “H” design mark is visually stylized as an abstract combination of the Chinese character “人” (meaning “people” in Chinese) and the numeral “1” and the Chinese character “人” thereof is presented in calligraphic form of leftward falling stroke and rightward falling stroke.  The stylized calligraphic combination displays humanity in zen spirit.  In a combined form of flexible Chinese character and English letter “H”, Home Hotel’s “H” design mark delivers a business concept consolidating the Chinese and Western elements.  On the other hand, the letter “H” of Six Continents’ “H” logo is in a common letter font consisting of two vertical lines with one horizontal slant line running through and slightly rising rightwards.  Besides, there have been a lot of hotel business operators using trademarks or logos consisting of “H” letter and thus Home Hotel holds no intention to take a free ride on Six Continents’ “H” logo.

Besides, Six Continents Hotels, Inc., operated in the form of US-based hotel chains, is famed for providing all-round and quality services in line with international standards, as opposed to Home Hotel which goes in a different direction and manner.  Home Hotel is a boutique hotel with focus on the target customers from young people, nuclear families, and business travelers.  The business concept of Home Hotel is to create the Taiwanese style by providing a platform filled with made-in-Taiwan cultural and innovative design and creativity.  The IP Court indicated that the business concept, brand positioning, target customers, and services of both parties are different.  In addition, Home Hotel has also achieved fame as shown by the facts that its annual turnover reaches TWD0.16 billion and has won Trip Advisor’s (the travel website company providing review of travel-related content) Certificate of Excellence and it has also been frequently recommended and reported online or on the media.  Based on the above reasoning that both parties have different market positioning and there has been no occurrence of confusion between both parties, the IP Court decided in favor of Home Hotel and the MOEA’s ruling should be revoked.  This case is appealable.  (October 2015)
/CCS