Analyzed Law – In today’s era of globalization, the brand of a product or service is important. A brand is the face of a good or service, usually a brand that is already known to the public will be more easily attracted. Article 1 Number 1 of the Trademark Law, a brand is a sign that can be displayed graphically in the form of an image, logo, name, word, letter, number, color arrangement, in 2-dimensional and/or 3-dimensional form, sound, hologram, or a combination of 2 or more of these elements are used to differentiate goods and/or services produced by individuals or legal entities in goods and/or services trading activities. Meanwhile, Article 1 Number 2 states that, A trademark is a brand used on goods traded by a person or several people together or legal entities to distinguish it from other similar goods
Adrian Sutedi in his book entitled Intellectual Property Rights, explains that a brand is a part of the form of intellectual work which has an important role in smoothing and increasing sales of goods or services in the form of legal protection. The form of legal protection is that the holder of the rights to the brand can use the brand. Apart from that, the holder of the rights to the mark has the exclusive right to grant permission or prohibit other parties from using the mark. Whereas Darmadi Durianto, et al, in his book entitled Strategy for Conquering the Market through Equity and Brand Behavior Research explains, if a company has reached a stage where the public widely knows the brand, then this can cause bad faith from its competitors by imitating, pirating, even counterfeiting the brand’s products by the aim of gaining trade profits in a short time with bad intentions (bad faith).
An example of a brand known by the public is a well-known ice cream product from the city of Yogyakarta called Tempo Gelato. The development of Tempo Gelato was sued over trademark copyright issues. Tempo Gelato is accused of using other people’s trademarks, logos and sales products. Based on these allegations, the plaintiff then filed a lawsuit for trademark cancellation as registered and decided in case Number 6/Pdt.Sus-HKI/Merek/2020/PN Niaga Smg., at the Semarang Commercial Court and confirmed again in Cassation Decision Number 473 K/Pdt.Sus-HKI/2021, at the Supreme Court.
The decision explained that the fact was that the Defendant had registered the Tempo Gelato Trademark accompanied by a logo on September 25 2017, while the Plaintiff only registered the Tempo Gelato Trademark accompanied by a logo on January 29 2020. Furthermore, when the Defendant registered the Tempo Gelato Trademark accompanied by a logo, it did not have similarities with the registered trademark belonging to other parties or applied for by other parties or well-known by others. Thus, the Plaintiff was declared to have committed an act of infringement of the Tempo Gelato Brand and was ordered to stop all business activities carried out by the Plaintiff to sell and/or trade ice cream products using the Tempo Gelato Brand.Conclusion
Learning from the brand dispute case that happened to Tempo Gelato, it is important to register product or service brands to provide legal protection for business actors. Legal protection means that if there is or is found a trademark that contains elements of similarity in essence or as a whole, it can be requested through the court to stop all business activities, whether selling and/or trading similar goods or services.
In addition, the brand owner also has the exclusive right to grant permission or prohibit other parties from using the mark. So, apart from losing profits from trademark registration, companies that do not have registered trademarks will find it easy for other parties to gain profits from branding goods or services. Even in the absence of legal protection of the trademark registrant is not impossible trademark produced by a company will be taken over by other companies.Jl. Anggajaya 2, Sanggrahan, Condongcatur
Yogyakarta, Indonesia