An American plastics company failed in the latest stage of its seven-year attempt to register the term as a trademark in Ireland.
The court upheld a decision by the patents commissioner to reject the application by New Jersey-based Sealed Air Corporation, which describes itself as a manufacturer of “air cellular cushioning material”.
Sealed Air, whose bubble wrap is a trademark in America, argued that similar protection should be given to its product here. The trademark would prevent other manufacturers from using it to describe their products.
The court heard arguments about whether bubble wrap was a generic term at the time of Sealed Air’s 1996 application.
Counsel for Sealed Air referred to the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary which was published in 1993 and did not include bubble wrap as a noun. The patents office countered that bubble wrap featured as a noun in the 1999 edition of the Concise Oxford Dictionary.
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Mr Justice Smith said in his judgment there was a time lag between a new word being used in common parlance and being listed in a dictionary and was satisfied the term was generic in this country for the type of material.
The patents office rejected Sealed Air’s application because it felt that the application fell foul of the Trade Marks Act 1996 on two counts. The office considered the term to be descriptive of the goods and that it was “devoid of any distinctive character”.
Sealed Air Corporation, which is quoted on the New York stock exchange, recently announced profits of $269.5m (€238.5m) and net sales of $867m for the second quarter of 2003. The company will study the judgment before considering an appeal.