Sony Interactive Entertainment To Sue EUIPO Over Huawei GT Trademark

Huawei ‘s decision to move forward with their GT line of watches continues to meet resistance from Sony Interactive Entertainment, who are filing a lawsuit to stop the tech company.

It starts like this- Huawei had started producing their GT watch series, using the term as a shorthand for Gran Turismo. While the word is common parlance in racing communities- literally meaning grand tour, and being used by companies like Ferrari to describe their top-of-the-line cars, it’s also the name of Playstation’s premier racing game, Gran Turismo.

Sony Interactive Entertainment has filed multiple appeals against the trademarks for the line of watches, to defend their trademark on the name. All this while, the GT Watch and the GT Watch 2 have been launched. They’d also tried appealing GT racing, but were denied by EU courts.

Now, Huawei has filed the trademarks for GT3 and GT5- the next in their line of smartwatches. As uncovered by LetsGo Digital, it looks like Sony Interactive Entertainment is challenging the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO), presumably after rejecting their appeal against Huawei.

According to the filing, they’re trying to get the trademark filing for GT3 and GT5 anulled- which is to say, overturned so Huawei would not be able to continue using the name for their watches.

The Tricky Thing With Trademark Law

The fact Sony Interactive Entertainment doesn’t have a good track record with defending the Gran Turismo trademark has a lot to do with how trademark law works. For one, you can’t trademark generic words.

That is to say you couldn’t create a candy called Chocolate Bar and expect the EUIPO or any other trademark office to register that, because chocolate bars are a thing that exists.

Worse still, trademarks can become generic, such as with yo-yos and cellophane, which started as trademarked names but just became synonymous with their product.

That being said, we at GamerBraves aren’t legal experts, and it’s anyone’s guess how the case could go. Neither Sony Interactive Entertainment nor Huawei have commented on the lawsuit.

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