Patent Court Decision, 2015Heo3993, decided February 3, 2016 (ChargeNow Case)
Article 6(1)(iii) of the TMA provides that ‘any trademark consisting solely of a mark indicating in a common way the origin, quality, efficacy, use and the like of a product’ shall not be registered, and thus in order to say that a composite trademark containing several constituent parts such as characters and figures, etc. falls under the provision, it is not sufficient that only a part of the constituent parts of the composite trademark falls under the provision, but the composite trademark as a whole should be indicating in a common way the origin, quality, efficacy, use and the like of a product.
On the other hand, Article 6(1) of the TMA provides that any trademarks are registerable if not falling under each subparagraph of the provision and thus if registration of a trademark is rejected on the ground that the trademark applied for registration falls under each subparagraph of Article 6(1) of the TMA, the responsibility of evidencing as such is imposed on the person asserting such.