Legal Aspects of the Unregistered Marks of Goods and Services Used in the Course of Trade

This dissertation theses addresses the phenomenon of the unregistered mark for goods and services in accordance with trade mark law of the Czech Republic, while taking into consideration the given scope of EU law and its comparison with the legal protection of applied trade marks in the framework of the "passing-off" doctrine of the legal systems of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. While the subject of trade marks has already been thoroughly established in juristic theory and has also become commonplace in legal practice, the institute of the unregistered trade mark has not yet to be comprehensively examined, and as such it presents significant difficulties in applied practice, as it bears no solid legal foundation, and in the context of the regulations of trade mark law it is always possible to identify specific special entitlements arising from the existence or application of unregistered trade marks, whereas the nature of their verbal formulations and systematic classification presents difficulties in the interpretation and application of such entitlements. The basis for this reasoning is namely the historical evolution of the phenomenon of the unregistered mark in trade mark law in Austrian, respectively in subsequent Cisleithania, and its reception and evolvement within Czechoslovak law as the legal predecessor to the Czech Republic. The goal of the research presented herein is to identify answers to the underlying theoretical questions concerning unregistered marks of fundamental significance to applied practice, and in so far as they concern the nature of the unregistered mark as perceived by trade mark law and its definitional attributes, terms of origin, duration, and expiration of unregistered marks, or more precisely as they concern rights to them, as well as the terms and scope of disposition with unregistered marks, namely in so far as they in turn relate to transfer or conversion and the grant of license or other temporary right of use. Subsequently, the establishment of answers to the aforementioned questions addresses the problem of the absence of an explicit legal principle to the phenomenon of the unregistered mark and the interpretation difficulties offered in the poorly formulated laws and subsequent fluctuations in legal practice. This problem is examined within the legal setting of the Czech Republic as a democratic nation with a market economy, in which holds true the classic legal rudiment of "that which is not prohibited by law is permitted", and in which hold true the fundamental and indefeasible rights of man, a component of which is the right to freely pursue economic activities and possess property within a framework of restrictions favouring the preservation of the rights of others as set forth by the law.