Not allowed to have individual business activities named LRF Konsult

Not allowed to have individual business activities named LRF Konsult

Not allowed to have individual business activities named LRF Konsult

A person named K.W. applies to the Swedish Companies Registration Office to register a sole proprietorship called LRF Konsult as a sub-operation of her company Horses on Request.

According to the application, the firm must provide financial, legal and technical advice in agriculture, forestry and horse industry.

LRF is an acronym for The Swedish Farmers’ Association, which is an organization that small business owners can join.

When assessing whether the registration is to be carried out, the Swedish Companies Registration Office is primarily based on the Law on Company Names.

According to Chapter 1 of the Act, section 1 is the name under which a trader carries out his business.

As an entrepreneur, it is also possible to run part of your business under a different name, which then constitutes a so-called special company name.

In the present case, K.W. therefore wishes to register a specific company name.

The generic term for company names and especially company names is nutritional characteristics.

Furthermore, Chapter 2 provides Section 3 and 4 of the circumstances in which registration of nutritional characteristics cannot be approved.

For example, if a company has a company name or special company name registered, another company cannot register such a business characteristic in the same or similar industry.

The limit for when such registration is unlawful is when there is a risk that consumers believe that two companies are linked, or where there is a risk of confusion between characteristics.

The assessment of possible likelihood of confusion is based on a combination of characteristics and business similarity; if the similarity of the signs of nutrition is high, the activities need to be less similar in order for registration barriers to be present and vice versa.

Furthermore, the distinctiveness of a characteristic is important.

Distinctiveness is, in this context, briefly a measure of how easily one name can be distinguished from others.

Names with a high distinctiveness have a stronger protection than those with low ones.

The Swedish Companies Registration Office claims that there are several companies with similar characteristics in such industries as the company K.W. applies to register.

Some of these are LRF’s farm service, LRF’s Lanttjänst and the Swedish Farmers’ Association.

It is further noted that the Swedish Farmers’ Association holds many company names, all of which contain the letter combination LRF with different additions.

The characteristic LRF may thus be considered well known on the market, which is why the Swedish Companies Registration Office considers its distinctiveness to be strong.

In an overall assessment, the Swedish Companies Registration Office therefore considers that the name LRF Konsult is too similar to already registered characteristics and therefore rejects K.W’s application.

Patent and Market Court

K.W. appeals the decision to the Patent and Market Court (PMD), which thus has to examine the accuracy of the Swedish Companies Registration Office’s decision.

PMD initially notes that K.W. applied for registration of {1>special company names <1}for a subsidiary of her already existing company Horses on Request.

However, the Swedish Companies Registration Office has examined the registration of {2>company names, <2}which the court considers to be a procedural error in the handling of the case.

However, the Court notes that, in Chapter 1, it is not necessary to establish that the commission’s case should be used in the course of the

Section 1 of the Company Name Act stipulates that what applies to company names in the act also applies to specific company names, which is why the procedural error could not have affected the outcome of the decision.

It is therefore proceeding to examine whether the Swedish Companies Registration Office has made an accurate assessment.

Regarding the name LRF Konsult, PMD and the Swedish Companies Registration Office consider that there is a likelihood of confusion with other already registered nutritional characteristics.

The Court therefore rejects KW’s appeal, which upholds the Swedish Companies Registration Office’s decision.