August 2018. Beierserdorf, owner of the Nivea brand, has been pulling out all the stops to protect its well-known Nivea packaging. It’s even registered a trademark in which the word ‘Nivea creme’ has been replaced by a series of representative stripes. It’s a clear attempt to try to widen the scope of the protection afforded to the packaging.

Two European trademark registrations for Nivea.

Invalid

Recently, however, Swiss cosmetics firm Diffulice managed to get the no-text trademark declared invalid. Diffulice argued that Nivea had never used it and that its rights to it had therefore lapsed. Since Beiersdorf was understandably unable to show any evidence of use, the registration was duly revoked.

Tit for tat

If you look at things more closely, you’ll understand why Diffulice went to all that trouble: it was itself previously attacked by Beiersdorf, which had filed an opposition to the blue and white logos Diffulice had been trying to register. The blue trademark with white stripes was one of the registrations on which Beiersdorf had based its opposition. Now that this very trademark has been toppled, Beiersdorf will be forced to rely mainly on its trademark with text.

Diffulice’s European trademarks which were attacked by Beiersdorf