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Bottom line: The Board found “AIRIA” is not similar to “AirriA”.

The applicant sought registration of “AIRIA” with respect to clothing, footwear and headgear.  The examiner cited an earlier registration for “AirriA and its phonetic equivalent in katakana” shown below, designating, inter alia, clothing as a confusingly similar mark.

[The cited mark]


The designated goods of the two marks are partially identical and so the question is whether the marks are distinguishable or not.  In particular, the pronunciation of the two marks are critical.

The Board found as follows:

-　The applied-for mark “AIRIA” is not a dictionary word and there is no English word roughly corresponding to this term.  Therefore, “AIRIA” will be pronounced [a-i-ri-a], in so-called Romanized way of reading.
-　The cited mark consists of “AirriA” in the upper position and its phonetic equivalent in katakana in lower position.  Naturally, the katakana portion is recognized to identify the pronunciation of “AirriA” and therefore the cited mark will be pronounced [e-a-ri-a].
-　The sound of the marks [a-i-ri-a] and [e-a-ri-a] are clearly distinguishable due to the difference of the first two sound.
-　The marks at issue are significantly different in appearance, and not comparable in meaning as both marks are coined word and does not have any connotation.

So the Board reversed the refusal, and granted registration of “AIRIA” for clothing, etc.

 

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