Registrar-Generals-Department-Annual-report-1962-1963 — Page 32

on 31st March 1963 was 19,047 comprising 2,957 re-registered pre-war marks and 16,090 new marks.

Oppositions and Hearings

81. Twenty oppositions were pending at the beginning of the year, and seventeen further notices of oppositions were received during the year. Five oppositions were withdrawn, four opposed applications were abandoned, and one opposed application went to a hearing before the Registrar, leaving twenty-seven pending at the end of the year. Op- positions rarely go to a hearing before the Registrar; usually one side or the other withdraws, or the parties arrive at some compromise arrangement acceptable to the Registrar.

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82. There were altogether seven hearings during the year. The first was on an application under Rule 63 for the removal of a mark from the register, but when the case came on for hearing the case was settled by the applicants withdrawing their application for removal on terms including an undertaking by the opponents not to oppose an application by the applicants for concurrent registration of the mark in respect of the same class of goods under Section 22, and Mr. R. H. MUNRO, Deputy Registrar General, gave a decision accordingly. The second hear- ing related to an application to register the mark 4' meaning 'obtaining strength element' in class 5 in respect of pharmaceutical preparations consisting of or containing glucose or dextrose, all prepared for medicinal purposes, and in class 30 in respect of preparations con- sisting of or containing dextrose or glucose, all for use as food or as ingredients for food, the question being whether this mark consisting as it did of descriptive words was capable of becoming distinctive by user. The Registrar, Mr. W. K. THOMSON, following the opinion ex- pressed by Fletcher MOULTON, L.J. in the Perfection case that the question whether a word is or is not capable of becoming distinctive of the goods of a particular maker is a question of fact, and is not determined by its being or not being descriptive, decided that the proper course was to allow evidence of distinctiveness to be submitted. In the third case Mr. THOMSON held that 'DENTAGARD', which the Colgate- Palmolive Company had applied to register in class 21 in respect of toothbrushes, was not an invented word within the meaning of Section 9(1)(c), and that as the word was descriptive of the goods it could not be registered. The fourth hearing was on an application to register “SOVEREIGN' in class 14 in respect of horological instruments, includ- ing watches, clocks and their parts and accessories. It was held by

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