Olfactory Trademarks - A Need To Create A Space For Its Sense!

Smell means to perceive the odour or scent of something through stimuli affecting the olfactory nerves. Smell is said to be one of the most potent types of human memory and it has the ability to conjure up images and initiate memories in a person's mind. Businesses show increasing interest in pairing pleasant scents with their products and under certain circumstances a scent may cause a consumer to associate a particular product with a single commercial source.

As such, scents are capable of functioning as source identifiers which is one of the essential requisite of trademarks. Smell marks are non-conventional trademarks, which means smell marks are those which does not belong to a pre-existing, conventional  category of trade marks. This category is often difficult to register as a trademark, but which may nevertheless fulfil the essential trademark function of uniquely identifying the commercial origin of products or services.