Uber is one of the world’s leading tech startups

Uber is a technology company from San Francisco that offers a mobile app for car transportation and food delivery. The company operates in over 600 cities globally and is valued at 68 billion USD (November 2017). Uber has been in business in Sweden since January 2013.

A Swedish company filed a trademark application for UBERSKILLS

The Swedish company Red Core AB filed a trademark application for UBERSKILLS in Sweden for goods and services where Uber owns trademark registration. Our task was to limit the scope of protection for Red Core’s trademark to ensure that it does not infringe and damages Uber’s trademarks.

We made sure Uber was successful in the opposition

We represented Uber in an opposition case before the Swedish Patent and Registration Office (PRV), where we argued that there was a high risk of confusion between UBERSKILLS and Uber’s trademarks. The opposition was based on Uber’s registered trademarks UBER, UBERX, UBERPOP, UBEREATS and UBERPOOL.

PRV confirmed our argumentation in its ruling, namely that UBERSKILLS has a high degree of similarity with Uber’s trademarks and that customers could perceive UBERSKILLS as a version of Uber’s trademarks and therefore be of the same commercial origin as Uber’s trademarks. PRV found that there was a risk that the trademark UBERSKILLS could be mistaken for Uber’s trademarks and to a large extent cancelled the registration of UBERSKILLS – both by cancelling a number of classes completely, and by limiting the goods and services listed in other classes. By doing so, the protection of UBERSKILLS was largely limited and minimized the likelihood of confusion with Uber and their trademarks.