Avoiding Descriptiveness Refusal In Laos: Key Considerations For Trademark Owners

A trademark is a source identifier denoting that a product/service belongs to a certain company or person, and distinguishes it from the products/services of others so that is it eligible to be protected by law. Thus, a sign that has no source-indicating significance must be refused registration to ensure that all other individual or entities are free to use such it.

In Laos, not a few trademark applications are denied on the grounds that the proposed trademarks fail to meet the protection requirement as they are considered descriptive of the goods or services in question or common names the designate the goods/service they represent. This is because common names or descriptive signs are used widely in everyday language and cannot be exclusively attributed to one particular source. As a result, those signs cannot function as a trademark and is not protected. If such signs were allowed to be registered as a trademark, it would unfairly prevent competitors from using