Imperial trademark register

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The first registered trademark was the rococo-like, curved lettering of the manufacturer of Eau de Cologne, Johann Maria Farina opposite Jülichs-Platz .

The Reichswarenzeichenregister was a character roll for the registration of trademarks for the purpose of trademark protection in the German Reich , often abbreviated to RWZR or in the more common spelling RWZR at the time

history

In the spring of 1874 , Lothar von Faber introduced a petition to the German Reichstag to protect his products against cheap imitators . This prompted the law on trademark protection , which was published in the version of November 30, 1874 in the German Reichsanzeiger and came into force on May 1, 1875. This law initially only protected figurative marks . The registration of pictorial trademarks took place from 1875 at the responsible local court.

In 1894 the Product Designation Act was enacted, officially: Act for the Protection of Product Designations , in order to remedy the shortcomings of the first law that were found in practice. In addition to the lack of protection for word marks or figurative-word marks and the possibility of registering small craft businesses without an entry in the commercial register, the lack of centralization in particular was criticized in the 1874 regulation. The examination of the applications was therefore only carried out to a very limited extent and symbols that could not be protected were repeatedly entered. Without a central office for the registration process with a comprehensive register of all signs, neither a uniform registration practice nor a reliable overview of the registered signs was possible.

The law of 1894 transferred jurisdiction from the local courts to the Imperial Patent Office founded in 1877 in Berlin, after which it was renamed in 1919 to the Reich Patent Office . From this point in time, image and, for the first time, word marks were entered in a uniform central register. However, not every manufacturer has actually applied for and registered their trademarks or brand names. A “compulsory use” for the register was only included in a later legal regulation for the protection of trademarks in 1967.

After the end of the Second World War, the patent office - like all Reich authorities - had to stop its work. The German Patent and Trademark Office is now responsible for the much more extensive successor to the Reichszeichenregister .

construction

According to an announcement dated February 8, 1875, the register of symbols had the following structure:

  1. Name of the company, main branch and place of entry in the commercial register
  2. Day and hour of registration
  3. Type of goods for which the trademark is intended
  4. figurative representation of the trademark
  5. other remarks

The structure changed due to the law for the protection of the names of goods in the central character roll from 1894 as follows:

  1. Entry time instead of day and hour of registration
  2. In order to lift the restriction only to companies registered in the commercial register, "the name of the business in which the symbol is to be used" was sufficient.
  3. a list of the goods for which the mark is intended
  4. clear representation and, if necessary, a description of the sign

Brands

A particularly large number of German manufacturers of porcelain have registered the porcelain brands they use in the Reichsmark Register. Therefore, corresponding abbreviations, especially RWZR, are well known among collectors of porcelain objects to this day.

literature

  • Wilhelm Endemann : The trademark protection according to the Reich law of November 30, 1874. In: Archive for theory and practice of the general German trade and bill of exchange law. Volume 32, 1875, pp. 1-98 ( digitized version ).

Web links

Wikisource: Trademark Protection Act  - Sources and Full Texts
Wikisource: Law for the Protection of the Descriptions of Goods (1894)  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ File No. 60. Fifth Report of the Petitions Commission . Protocols of the German Reichstag at: reichstagsprotocol.de , accessed on March 21, 2016
  2. ↑ Elmar Wadle: Trademark protection and trademark law Part 1: Development. In: Schriften zur Rechtsgeschichte , Heft 14, 1977, p. 249.
  3. ↑ after old orthography even with two a written
  4. ^ Arnold Seligsohn: Law for the protection of product names , Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 1925, p. 43
  5. ^ Josef Kohler: The right of brand protection , Stahel 1884, p. 58
  6. ↑ Ludwig Danckert: Handbuch des Europäische Porzellans , Prestel, Munich - Berlin - London - New York, ISBN 978-3-7913-3281-9 , p. 9f.