What may be registered as a trademark?

Trademark protection in Armenia is extended to any mark used to distinguish goods and services and that may be graphically presented.

A trademark can, for example, consist of letters, numerals, words, including personal names and company names, building names, word combinations, slogans, logos, pictures, drawings, holograms, arrangement of colors, symbols, or combinations of one or more of those elements.

Aside from these conventional trademarks, Armenian law grants protection to “non-traditional” marks such as the shape of goods or their packaging, three dimensional marks, sound, texture etc.

Service marks, jointly-owned marks and collective marks may also be registered as trademarks.

A sign cannot be registered if it lacks distinctiveness, i.e. is descriptive or generic. This can be the case where the sign consists purely of elements pertaining to the amount, quality, condition, value, place of origin or other characteristics of the goods or services or if the sign serves as the common term for the goods and services at hand.

A sign cannot be registered if it would be capable of deceiving the public or would constitute infringement of a copyright, industrial property right or any other third parties’ exclusive rights.

Furthermore, a sign cannot be registered as a trademark if it is offensive or consists of specially protected emblems (flags, official signs of quality control etc.)

It is worth noting that what may be registered as a company name or domain name may not be acceptable as a trademark.