There are two very interesting rulings on the impossibility of registering the term “ESPETEC” as a trademark.
The first is the Judgment of the Supreme Court (Civil Division) No. 1077/1993 of November 12, which states that a trademark registered with this name is not valid because:
said Catalan word has a generic character as it designates, in one of its meanings “botifarra que no es cou, sinó que la deixen asecar i després se la mengen,” as well as “espetegall” is the denomination of “botifarra de carn bona, crua, seca, de budell estret i prim amb forma de nansa” (Diccionari Català-Valencià-Balear by Francesc de B. Moll).
And it continues by stating that:
“espetec” refers to a class of meat products made with pork, mixed or not with others, whose characteristic would be that it is left to dry before being consumed, from which it follows that the Court correctly applied the cited statutory provision, since “espetec” is not an original name to designate the appellant’s products but rather refers to a general class of “botifarra” and by itself identifies it as such, having been used, at least, in some Catalan regions with direct reference to the product already described, so that by admitting it as a trademark for the product marketed by the appellant, the latter would exclusively use a general denomination introducing a high level of confusion in the market and depriving other manufacturers of identifying their products with a general term,
This judgment will later be cited in a recent ruling from 2010 by the EUIPO (DECISION of the Second Board of Appeal of November 12, 2010), where the registration of the ESPETEC trademark is denied for several reasons, the first being:
The applied-for trademark consists of the word ESPETEC whose meaning in the Catalan language is that of “Fuet,” that is, “narrow and long sausage, similar to salami, typical of Catalonia.” This meaning is also confirmed by the definition appearing in the Catalan-Valencian-Balearic dictionary of the Institut d’Estudis Catalans (http://dcvb.iecat.net/) according to which “espetec” is a type of sausage that is not cooked but left to dry for consumption. It therefore consists of a term that unequivocally describes the type of product applied for “raw pork sausage” and whose meaning will be easily understandable by those who understand the Catalan language, especially in those areas of Spanish territory where said language is used or generally understood, as is the case of Catalonia, the Balearic Islands, and the Valencian Community. In short, “espetec” is a typical Catalan sausage (“botifarra” in Catalan, or “butifarra” in Spanish), as the Spanish Supreme Court also held in its judgment No. 1077/1993 of November 12, by virtue of which the nullity of Spanish trademark No. 977402 “Espetec” was confirmed and as is likewise confirmed by the fact that it is included as such a product in the list of traditional pork butchery products (butcher shop-delicatessen) regulated by the corresponding regulations of the Generalitat de Catalunya (see in this regard Order ARP/304/2005 of July 1, which determines the traditional typical products that may be produced by butcher shops-pork butcheries in Catalonia, published in the Official Gazette of the Generalitat de Catalunya, DOGC No. 442, of July 11, 2005)
In conclusion, we cannot register this word as a trademark because it falls under the absolute grounds for refusal of being a descriptive term and failing to meet the requirement of distinctiveness.
