💭Creating a trademark without a vowel: distinctiveness or the illusion of legal certainty?

November 2025
By Pierre Favilli

What's at stake for your trademarks: availability, risk of confusion, refusal to register, legal uncertainty.

⛓CNTRBND / CONTRABANDO

The facts in brief:
Application for EU trademark "CNTRBND" for alcoholic beverages (Class 33)
Opposition based on earlier trademark "CONTRABANDO" for identical/similar goods
Applicant's argument: CNTRBND is an arbitrary term with no meaning in a European language
Central question: are the two signs so similar as to create a likelihood of confusion?

Assessment of the relevant public and perception of the sign:
Relevant public: average consumer in the European Union, focus on Spanish-speaking public
CONTRABANDO = Spanish word for "contraband goods"
CNTRBND analyzed as the de-emvoyelled version of CONTRABANDO

🔎Risk of confusion: legal analysis

Visual, phonetic and conceptual similarities:
Visual: close consonant sequence, very similar structure
Phonetic: consumer adds vowel sounds same pronunciation as CONTRABANDO
Conceptual: same evocation of "contraband"
Overall assessment: signs are deemed visually similar, phonetically and conceptually identical
Existence of likelihood of confusion - Application rejected CNTRBND

💡Legal best practices in naming

How to reduce the risk of refusal and litigation:
Do not limit yourself to a graphic variation (deletion of vowels, abbreviation)
Examine the conceptual distance with earlier signs
Include the "complete" word and its plausible abbreviated versions in prior art searches
Test public perception: how is the sign read? What does it mean?

➡️Les brands without vowels don't work as a legal "free pass"!

Boards integrate market codes: consumers "read between the lines" and reconstruct the original word

When it comes to naming, real security lies in:
a genuine strategy of conceptual distinctiveness
thorough and rigorous prior art searches