The Spanish Patent and Trademark Office (OEPM) has ruled the nullity of a trademark reproducing the Bitcoin logo, deeming it registered in bad faith and infringing the intellectual property rights of its creator "bitboy."
In the resolution, it states that “BITCOIN,” along with the registered design, had significant market penetration at the time of the challenged registration, such that the holder of the challenged registration knew or should have known of the prior sign when filing the application.
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The OEPM concludes that the challenged trademark was not registered to fairly participate in the competitive market process, but rather to exploit the rights of a third party, making the application an act of bad faith. For this reason, it applies the nullity ground under Article 51.1.b) of the Trademark Law.
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Additionally, the resolution highlights that the sign registered as a trademark was created in 2010 by a bitcointalk.org forum user known as "bitboy," who released it under “Creative Commons” licenses. These licenses are legal tools that allow authors to share their works with the public under specific conditions while retaining their copyrights.
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Thus, the OEPM holds that the challenged sign “incorporates a reproduction of the BITCOIN sign created by Bitboy and also constitutes a transformation of the original BITCOIN sign created by Satoshi Nakamoto. Accordingly, the nullity ground under Article 52.1 of the Trademark Law, in relation to Article 9.1.c), must be upheld.”
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OEPM Resolution (under “DOCUMENTS” section):
CEO