Protection of Trademark Bearing the Surname

Lithuanian Court of Appeals 25 March, 2002 (Alec M. Gallup vs. Suomen Gallup OY)

The Lithuanian Court of Appeals adopted the first ruling in a civil case regarding the registration of a trademark bearing a surname.

The history of the case was very simple: the owner of the trademark registration GALLUP sued the Lithuanian company BALTIC SURVEYS LTD for infringement of trademark owner's rights. The co-founder of this Lithuanian company, Mr. Alec M. Gallup, filed the claim with the Vilnius district court asking that the trademark registration GALLUP be declared void. The plaintiff stated that the defendant's trademark registration was made illegally, without the plaintiff's permission to register his surname as a trademark in the Republic of Lithuania.

This was the first case of its kind in Lithuania, and bearing in mind that the former Law on Trademarks and Service marks hadn't regulated this question precisely, specifically concerning whose permission was needed to register a trademark bearing a surname. The plaintiff agreed that his father, the founder of the opinion polling business in the USA, had given consent to the defendant to use his surname Gallup in trademark and trade name. However the plaintiff argued that the consent had been given only to use the surname, without the right to register it as a trademark, and only in the territory of Finland - the domicile country of the defendant. The plaintiff also stated that upon the death of his father he was the possessor of his father's non-proprietary rights to the surname, and he was of the opinion that he could revoke the consent given by his father.

When examining the case the court had to answer two questions: 1) could the consent given by the plaintiff's father, George H. Gallup, in Finland be applied to the registration of the trademark or only for the use of the same, and if this consent could be applied to Lithuania, and 2) whether the successor could revoke the consent given by his father.

In reference to the second question, the court decided that the consent is a one-sided transaction in which the duration is not related to the applicant's life span. Therefore successors can not contradict any legal consequences that arise from it in the specific sphere of the trademark relations nor can they revoke such consent.

The first question however was more complicated. The written consent given by the father of the plaintiff seemed to be unlimited. There were no restrictions with...