The EUIPO Grand Board of Appeal issued a decision on 27 May 2026 confirming that the book titles “ANIMAL FARM” and “1984” must be refused because they constitute descriptive indications and lack distinctive character in relation to the goods and services at issue.
On 6 March 2018, The Estate of the Late Sonia Brownell Orwell filed two European Union trademark applications: one for the word sign “ANIMAL FARM” covering goods and services in various classes, including Classes 9, 16, 28 and 41, and another for “1984” covering goods and services in various classes, including Classes 9, 16 and 24.
The relevant goods and services included, among others, audiovisual, magnetic and digital media; books and printed publications; toys and games; as well as education- and entertainment-related services.
In June and July 2019, the applications were partially refused pursuant to Article 7(1)(b) and (c) EUTMR on the grounds that they described certain characteristics of the goods and services for which protection was sought and, moreover, lacked distinctive character.
Both decisions were appealed by the applicant. Subsequently, the Fifth Board of Appeal referred the cases to the Grand Board of Appeal after identifying divergent approaches in the decision-making practice regarding the registrability of book titles and the names of well-known fictional characters.
In the meantime, in 2024 two new applications for “ANIMAL FARM” and “1984” were successfully registered for goods and services in Classes 18, 21, 25, 28 and 45.
In its decision, the Grand Board concluded that the signs applied for were descriptive for all the goods and services claimed in Classes 9, 16, 28 and 41, since a significant part of the relevant public would immediately recognize “ANIMAL FARM” and “1984” as the titles of George Orwell’s novels. Consequently, those signs would be perceived, at first sight and without any further cognitive effort, as indicating the content or subject matter of the relevant goods and services. Its reasoning may be summarised as follows:
- When used in relation to goods and services whose nature is to contain or provide expressive content, the title of a work will be perceived primarily as identifying the work itself rather than as indicating that the goods or services originate from a particular undertaking. In the absence of evidence that the relevant public has been educated through use to perceive work titles as indicators of commercial origin, the signs cannot fulfil the essential origin function of a trademark.
- The difficulty in registering titles of famous works as trademarks stems from the fundamentally different functions performed by titles of artistic works and trademarks.
- Whereas a trademark serves to identify the commercial origin of goods or services, the title of a work serves primarily to designate and identify the work itself. In the absence of an established market practice whereby the title of a single work is used as an indicator of the undertaking responsible for the goods or services, the relevant public is not accustomed to perceiving such titles as indicators of commercial origin.
Noelia Gutiérrez
Attorney at Law
