The Superior Court of Justice of Madrid (TSJM) has determined that the British Hispanic Educational Centerlocated in La Laguna (Tenerife), you will not be able to use that name given the similarity what does he have with the British Hispanic College SLlocated in the town of Tías, in Lanzarote.
The latter filed an appeal against the resolution of the Spanish Patent and Trademark Office that allowed the registration of the Tenerife school and, after a long judicial process that can continue in the Supreme Court (TS), for a year they chose to call themselves an Educational Center Hispanic British S21.
The Lanzarote school denounced at the beginning of 2022 the registration of the name of the Tenerife in the patent office due to the similarities it presented, an appeal that was initially dismissed but has now been accepted by the contentious court of the Superior Court of Justice of Madrid. The center located in La Laguna was positioned in the opposite direction, that its original brand be recognized and that resolutions against it be rejected.
Specifically, they argued that there was no justification for prohibiting the registration considering that there are sufficient disparities between the two names, “excluding any risk of error or confusion in the market.”
They added that the common terms “Hispanic” and “British” and their coincidence “is not infrequent” since these are elements that are intended to show the characteristics of the education that will be taught there.
The Superior Court of Justice of Madrid, however, understands that “a simple vision, reading or hearing of the whole” can lead the consumer to some error, and even more so, as in this case, it deals with denominations that move in the same field such as education.
At the time, the Provincial Court of Las Palmas prohibited the use of the term British Hispanic in the center of Tenerife as it could be interpreted as being a subsidiary of the plaintiff, when appreciating “the existence of a denounced denominative similarity”.
The Superior Court of Justice of Madrid condemns the now called Centro Educativo Hispano Británico S21 and the patent office to pay, in equal parts, 3,000 euros corresponding to the lawyer’s fees.
The center downplays this change and considers the lawsuit “absurd” and even more so when the other school is located in Lanzarote, and therefore they say that there was never any risk of confusion between parents and students.
The one located in Tenerife is more than 40 years old but, once they were informed that they could be forced to change the denomination and without waiting for the ruling that has now been issued, they added S21 to the previous denomination.
They indicate that the judicial decision has had absolutely no repercussions on the day-to-day life of this center and that the change was communicated to the Ministry of Education at the time.
