Rock am Ring only at the Nürburgring?

Who holds the rights to the "Rock am Ring" mark? The Regional Court (LG) Koblenz had to decide in expedited proceedings in the naming dispute between Nürburgring GmbH and Marek Lieberberg whether the concert promoter holds the earlier rights to the festival name and thus may organise a concert of the same name also outside the ring.

The word mark "Rock am Ring" has been registered for Marek Lieberberg Konzertagentur GmbH & Co KG with the DPMA since 1993 and is thus protected under trade mark law.

The insolvent Nürburgring GmbH, which was operating under self-administration, nevertheless filed an application for interim relief against Marek Lieberberg. It requested that Mr Lieberberg be prohibited from organising his own music festival under the designation "Rock am Ring".

The circuit operator argued that the mark "Rock am Ring" was a protectable work title which had been used since 1986 for the well-known concert series on the Eifel ring.

In addition, Nürburgring GmbH requested that Mr Lieberberg be prohibited from asserting that the festival was a vision he himself had 30 years ago.

Court decision

The Regional Court (LG) Koblenz decided by judgment of 30.06.2014, Az. 2 HK O 32/14 (Press release), that the right to conduct music festivals under the designation "Rock am Ring" belongs to the concert promoter only jointly with the insolvent Nürburgring GmbH.

The court justified its decision on the grounds that the designation "Rock am Ring" constitutes a protectable work title, that is a designation capable of protection like a trade mark for an intellectual product. The work title "Rock am Ring" for the concept of a series of music festivals enjoyed legal protection already longer than the registered trade mark, namely since 1986, or at the latest since 1991, and thus prevailed over the trade mark of Mr Lieberberg.

The holder of the protected work title was a civil partnership in which both Nürburgring GmbH i. E. and the concert promoter participated. Nürburgring GmbH had been a co-organiser of the festival from the very beginning. In complete mutual agreement, the cooperation partners had always appeared jointly as organisers of the festival and were also perceived as such in the public. Then Mr Lieberberg must ask Nürburgring GmbH for permission to use the designation "Rock am Ring" – despite holding his own registered German word mark – in order to use the festival name.

The application for interim relief with regard to the requested prohibition to refrain from asserting that Rock am Ring was a vision that Mr Lieberberg had 30 years ago was unsuccessful. It was undisputed between the parties that both the idea for holding the festival and the name "Rock am Ring" originated solely from Mr Lieberberg. The concert manager may publicly communicate this, as it does not thereby infringe any trade mark rights in the work title "Rock am Ring".

Conclusion

Work titles too, such as the name of a music festival, grant the organiser trade mark rights with a priority which may be asserted against a registered word mark. The mark "Rock am Ring" as the title of a concert in this case belongs jointly to the organisers Lieberberg and Nürburgring GmbH, so that they may mutually exclude each other from its use.