TikTok fails Singapore’s recognition test in ‘Tiki’ dispute
Multinational tech company is not well known enough to be granted rare ‘enhanced‘ protection in Singapore | Opposition to ‘Tiki’ mark rejected by IP office | Bytedance argued that an India-China video app dispute influenced the case.
Bytedance, the parent company of TikTok, has failed to prevent a trademark registration for the word mark ‘Tiki’ filed by a video-sharing media company in Singapore, or to acquire enhanced protection for its various marks in the city state.
Dol Technology, which provides “voice over Internet protocol services” and software for interactive digital media, also successfully applied for device and composite marks at the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (IPOS)
Dol’s Tiki app, which launched in February 2021, allows users to create, watch and share short videos with friends. They can also like and comment on these videos and interact with the creators.
Bytedance argued that the disputed mark is similar to its own word mark for similar services, and sought enhanced protection for its various marks on the basis that they are allegedly well known in Singapore and/or well known to the public at large in Singapore.
Rare ‘enhanced’ protection
This type of protection is a rarity in Singapore. Only a handful of marks have been assessed by Singapore courts or IPOS and met this threshold of recognition. These are:
Seiko, Clinique, Nutella, Intel, Gucci and gMail.
In his assessment of ‘TikTok’, the IPOS registrar noted that trademarks that have attained the coveted status of being “well known to the public at large in Singapore” enjoy an extensive level of protection because “they are entitled to protection from use of a trademark on dissimilar goods or services even in the absence of a likelihood of confusion”.
“Marks which attain this status should therefore be confined to a rare and exclusive class,” wrote the registrar.
Bytedance provided evidence aimed at establishing that its various marks were well known in Singapore and/or well known to the public so it could attain this status.
However, its opposition failed on all grounds as the registrar found the application mark was not similar to any of the marks held by Bytedance and that there was no misrepresentation that would support a claim for ‘passing off’.
The registrar also found the marks were visually and conceptually dissimilar, and
aurally similar only to a low (or, at best, medium) extent.
IPOS did concur that the word mark ‘TikTok’ was well-known to the general public in Singapore, but found that Bytedance’s device and composite marks were only well known to certain sectors of the public—and did not to the extent of the general public in Singapore.
China-India dispute
Bytedance further argued that Dol is a related company of a Chinese company Joyy, the owner of various social media platforms such as the short-form video sharing platform, Likee, which was once a direct competitor of the TikTok platform.
According to Bytedance, India was formerly the largest international market for the TikTok platform. Following a border dispute with China, the Indian government banned 59 Chinese-made apps in June 2020, including both the TikTok and Likee apps.
The Tiki app, it argued, is in essence a repackaged version of the Likee app.
But IPOS found that this particular situation was irrelevant to the case. “These additional circumstances relied on by the opponent pertain to the alleged situation in India.
“There is no evidence as to the relevance of these circumstances from the perspective of the average consumer in Singapore, or whether the average consumer in Singapore would even be aware of these alleged circumstances,” concluded the registrar.
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