Subject of legal protection

As trademarks are registered:

• verbal designations, including proper names;
• combinations of colors;
• alphabetic;
• digital;
• graphical;
• volume designations, including the form of the product or its packaging;
• combined.

Other designations may be registered as trademarks in cases stipulated by the legislative acts of the Republic of Belarus. For example, currently, sound trademarks, trademarks perceived by smell may not receive legal protection as the trademark in the territory of the Republic of Belarus.

Colour and colour combination.

A trademark may be registered in any colour or colour combination.

There is an opinion that a black-and-white image has wider protection. Indeed, black-and-white colour is the most universal.

The overwhelming majority of trademarks are registered exactly in black-and-white colour; however, there are no legal grounds to speak of wider legal protection.

The effective legislation does not differentiate the scope of legal protection of the trademark from its colour registration or colour use. So after all, in what colour shall the trademark be registered?

One can find an answer in Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property: “Use of a trademark by the proprietor in a form differing in elements which do not alter the distinctive character of the mark in the form in which it was registered in one of the countries of the Union shall not entail invalidation of the registration and shall not diminish the protection granted to the mark”.

As it follows from this norm, changes in the trademark use must be of inessential character, i.e. without changing visual and/or phonetic impression of the trademark.

If however the colour range influences the mark perception materially, then it will be necessary to register in that colour combination, in which the mark is perceived literally, as its proprietor would wish to.