Snow White vs. Snow Flittchen

The Federal Patent Court had to decide whether the registered mark "Snow Flittchen and the 7 Lovely Dwarfs" was confusingly similar to the previously registered mark "Snow White" and should therefore be deleted from the trade mark register.

The proprietor of the mark "Snow White" registered for alcoholic beverages sought the deletion of the later filed mark "Snow Flittchen and the 7 Lovely Dwarfs", which was also registered in class 33 for alcoholic beverages.

Within the contested mark "Snow Flittchen", "Schneeflittchen" was the distinctive and characteristic word determining the overall impression. Therefore, there was at least a likelihood of mental confusion between the marks.

Court Decision
The Federal Patent Court ruled in its decision of 28.09.2011 – Az. 26 W (pat) 93/10) that there was no likelihood of confusion between the mark "Snow White" and the word sequence "Snow Flittchen and the 7 Lovely Lustzwerge" in the field of alcoholic beverages, since the marks in dispute exhibited immense differences in sound and visual appearance.

While the designations "Schneeflittchen" and "Schneewittchen" came close to each other in terms of sound and visual appearance, mere mishearing and misreading were ruled out given the clearly differing contours of the deviating letters "w" and "fl" respectively, even if the differences were located in the middle of the word.

The sonic and visual correspondence between the words "Schneewittchen" and "Schneeflittchen" was moreover significantly reduced by their differing conceptual content in a manner which was decisive for the outcome, so that a likelihood of confusion was to be denied, because the meaning would cause the reader and listener to perceive the visual and sonic differences substantially more quickly.

Conclusion

The Federal Patent Court assumes that the public will not confuse "Schneeflittchen" with the mark "Schneewittchen" on account of its allusion to the word "Flittchen", the meaning of which is clear to everyone. However, we venture to doubt that in the present case the public did not establish at least a mental connection between the marks where the goods were identical.