I – Introduction
When the new Industrial Property Law (IP Law) became in force in Brazil1, a new treatment of well-known or famous trademarks was introduced into the Brazilian legal system.
In fact, in Brazil now, trademarks can be classified into different grades, depending on the degree of public knowledge that they command:
- Ordinary trademarks, not famous or well known
: these trademarks can be registered in the class or classes corresponding to the products or services that they distinguish. This means that the protection of trademarks is ordinarily limited to the types of products or services for which they are used and in which they are registered. Registration of such ordinary trademarks will be granted provided that they are distinctive (that is, that they are not made up of words or signs commonly used to represent the product or service for which they are being registered); true (that is, that they do not lead the public into confusion); and relatively new (that is,
