Holi, the Hindu festival of colors, has sparked a registration fury at the community trademark office of the European Union, the Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market (OHIM). The fight is over the right to own the Holi festival of colors community trademark (CTM).
Holi is a religious festival celebrated by Hindus primarily in India as a welcoming of the spring season. The date varies year to year but the festival is usually held in March. Gathering in large crowds, celebrators wear white clothing and throw brightly colored powders and dyes into the air and onto each other, resulting in a euphoric rainbow of colors. The proliferation of images of Holi celebrators over the Internet, particularly social media sites, has fueled a global fascination with the festival.
As a result, the past few years have seen a dramatic escalation of Holi commercialization. BMW featured its car in a Holi-esque celebration in one of its ad campaigns. One company, The Color Run, ingeniously combined the idea of Holi with a fun run, marketed quite successfully as “the happiest 5k on the planet.” Most recently, as The Wall Street Journal reported last month, entrepreneurs have ventured into the business of bringing Holi music concert festivals to cities worldwide.
What started as a business venture between five German friends to make a commercialized version of the Holi festival has turned into a battle to be the king of the Holi festival trademark. The original five have split into two rival Holi festival production companies – Holi One World and Holi Festival of Colours – and are now pitted against each other as they battle to register and claim priority over the Holi CTM.
A French company, as well as what looks like a third German venture, have also filed Holi registrations with OHIM. The trademarks filed for include: “festival of colours,” “Holi One,” “Holi One Color Festival,” “Holi Peace,” “Holipowder,” “Holipulver,” and “Holi run.”
According to OHIM’s CTM application records, Holi One successfully filed an opposition against Holi Festival of Colours’ registration of “festival of colours,” arguing the mark is too generic to qualify as a valid trademark. OHIM is in the process of canceling the registration, but this hasn’t deterred Holi Festival of Colours from filing another registration for “festival of colors,” this time as a word and design mark.
Holi One World, applicant for the “Holi One” trademark, and Holi Festival of Colours are opposing each other’s trademark applications. Presumably the two German companies are fighting over priority and having confusingly similar marks if both were allowed registration (generally, the prior-registered trademark can prevent the use of a latter-registered trademark if the marks are so similar that consumers would be confused as to the source of the products and services offered each). The question indirectly posed at OHIM right now is whether one company or individual should be able to claim the rights to a “Holi” trademark simply because it registered the mark first, at least in Europe, and thus wins on priority grounds.
But should registration of a “Holi” festival mark even be allowed, given that Holi is the name of a religious festival with roots dating back thousands of years to the story of Lord Krishna and his lover Radha?. If Holi as a name can’t be given protection as a traditional cultural expression, shouldn’t it be considered generic – meaning, not distinguishing enough of a name to qualify as a trademark? Given that these commercial Holi variation trademarks have only made it through the first round of registration at OHIM (published for opposition) at this point, it appears that OHIM hasn’t yet considered whether “Holi” can actually be protected as a trademark.
Source: http://www.ipbrief.net/2013/11/18/a-trademark-holi-war/
