greenblack
03.12.03, 23:16
EU court rules Audi's TDI engine not a trademark
Reuters / December 03, 2003
LUXEMBOURG (Reuters) - Audi's "TDI" symbol, used by the German carmaker to
identify a type of turbo diesel engine, is not a trademark, a European Union
court ruled on Wednesday.
The European Court of First Instance, the EU's lower court, said TDI, an
abbreviation for "Turbo Diesel Injection" or "Turbo Direct Injection," was
not sufficiently distinctive in the 15-nation bloc to be awarded the status
of an EU trademark.
"Audi had produced no evidence enabling it to find that the mark 'TDI' had
become distinctive in this way in the (EU) member states other than Germany,"
the court said in a news release.
Audi, the luxury arm of Volkswagen, has two months to appeal the decision
before the European Court of Justice, the EU's highest court.
In 1996, Audi asked the Office for Harmonisation of the Internal Market
(OHIM), the EU's authority for trademarks, to register TDI as a trademark.
But the OHIM turned down the request, saying the word mark did not have any
distinctive character.
A pamiętacie aferę, jak Volkswagen w 1996 zmusił Opla do zmiany nazwy Vectry
2.0 TDI na 2.0 DTI? Reszta się przestraszyła i powstawały kolejne ciekawe
skróty dla diesli. Najdłuższy ma Honda - i-CTDI.
