Seth Wheeler of Albany, New York, obtained the earliest United States patents for toilet paper in 1891.

Look at the patent drawing, it answers the most common question “over versus under”. Now you know for sure how our great-great-grandfathers did it.

So, what about Ukraine?

Let’s pay attention to the toilet paper production monster of Ukraine – Kyiv Cardboard and Paper factory (hereinafter – The Factory). I`m talking about Obuhivskyi toilet paper, which had a difficult fate on the way to fame and recognition.

In 2001 The Factory registered a patent for the industrial model “TOILET PAPER PACKAGING MATERIAL”.

Then, in 2010, The Factory registered a trademark for toilet paper packaging.

Without going into details, it is not very good strategy to register a trademark that is too complicated:

• such trademarks may not be distinctive or well defined;
• it will be easier for unscrupulous competitors to imitate your trademark, and more difficult for you to prove that they being copied in court.

Apparently, due to the success of “OBUKHOV” toilet paper, crafty people wanted such a prize for themselves, and in 2010, one person registered a patent for an industrial design that looks like this:

Under part 1 article 6 Law of Ukraine No. 3688-XII of December 15, 1993, on Protection of Rights to Industrial Designs an industrial design responds to a protected status if it is new and has individual character.

So, The Factory challenged the right of the company to use this logo and annulled this patent in court, because the patent was invalidated.

But people didn’t give up, and in 2011 another person received a trademark certificate, that look like this:

However, there’s no knowing whether there was a refusal on this application, but the fact remains that the certificate was issued. So, The Factory has annulled this certificate in a court.

Many others infringed St. Obukhivsky`s rights. Just look at a selection of images from the Ukrpatent database (all patents, certificates and applications were annulled for now):

After all these infringements The Factory decided not to register complex a trademark but only its important elements. And in 2015 The Factory registered a separate packaging material element.

• It’s not effective protection when a trademark is too complicated.
• Monitoring violations is an important step in protecting trademarks. In the case of regular monitoring, it would be possible to avoid at least one court case. It was possible to apply an opposition on a similar trademark to Ukrpatent.
• It is necessary to register important trademark elements separately.

It is interesting that there was a practice of filing trademarks in several languages at once in Ukraine. For example:

Некомпетентність
Incompetence
Niekompetencja

Under part 4 article 5 Law of Ukraine No. 3689-XII of December 15, 1993, on Protection of Rights to Trademarks for Goods and Services (as amended up to May 21, 2015) the scope of trademark protection is determined by a trademark image and goods and services list.

In addition to the fact that you will not use this kind of trademark in practice, it will be very difficult to protect such a trademark.