Roger Jørgensen from Bryne has been told to obtain approval from Storting politician Bjørnar Moxnes, but maintains that the sunglasses plans are not about him.
Bryne man Roger Jørgensen wants to trademark the name Moxnes, but claims that it has nothing to do with the parliamentary representative (the silhouette in the picture). Photo: Håkon Mosvold Larsen / NTBPublished: Published:
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– It’s not about Bjørnar Moxnes, says Jørgensen to E24.
– Doesn’t it? That’s the first thing I thought of, anyway?
– Many probably draw that conclusion, but it is not about him.
Together with a business partner, Ole Henrik Wigestrand, he has submitted an application for trademark registration of the text “Moxnes” to the Norwegian Patent and Trademark Office.
Product class: Sunglasses.
– We are talking to factories in Italy now, and want to make quality sunglasses, says Jørgensen.
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Bjørnar Moxnes was caught in June for stealing sunglasses at Oslo Airport. He admitted the case and passed a fine of NOK 3,000. At the end of July, he resigned as Rødt leader after a summer in the media storm.
– I made a big mistake, and I made it much worse with the way I handled it further. I am really sorry for that, and I want to say sorry for that, Moxnes wrote in one status update on Facebook.
Bjørnar Moxnes has not responded to E24’s inquiries about the matter. At Rødt, press secretary Maren Njøs Kurdøl replies that neither they nor Moxnes wish to comment.
– Good things in the name
For his own business idea, Roger Jørgensen draws parallels to ski star Petter Northug’s launch of sunglasses, which are manufactured in China.
– Quality over profit. But the goal is also to get a trademark that will have green numbers.
And the name the two are applying to use can mean several things, says Jørgensen.
– If you search for the meaning of the name “Moxnes”, he is not the only one with that name. And there are good things in the meaning of the name itself, says Jørgensen.
– Like what?
– I don’t have that in front of me here, but it is in the same way that “Roger” means “spear”, for example, he says.
He later writes in an email that the name Moxnes means intelligent, healer and humanitarian.
Because the brand allegedly has nothing to do with Bjørnar Moxnes, the applicants will also not ask the Storting politician for approval to use the name in the sunglasses venture.
However, the Norwegian Patent and Trademark Office has asked them to try.
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Must have consent
“Used for “sunglasses” in class 9, our assessment is that the brand is suitable for designating the Norwegian parliamentary representative Bjørnar Moxnes. In this case, no consent has been submitted from the person concerned, and the mark cannot therefore be registered,” writes the Norwegian Patent Office in its statement to the application.
Jørgensen has until 16 November to respond to the statement, with or without approval from Bjørnar Moxnes. Jørgensen intends to do that.
– We will use the next couple of weeks to write a complaint. So it will be exciting to see, he says.
It remains to be seen what the Norwegian Patent and Trademark Office says about the matter.
– We refuse the application because it designates a specific person, says section head Knut Andreas Bostad for the design and trademark department in the Patent Office.
He explains that it is, among other things, about the person being linked to the product class, as in the case of Moxnes and sunglasses.
Section manager Knut Andreas Bostad in the Patent Office. Photo: Trond Isaksen
– In an imaginary case, if, for example, someone searched for the name “Kjus” for flower pots and not alpine equipment, then it would be easier to get it registered.
For the record, the former alpinist himself has applied for and been approved for the label.
122 people could have had objections
There is also a provision in the Trade Marks Act, which admittedly has not been used in this case, which applies to protected family names, Bostad says.
– There are 122 people named Moxnes, and in that case they could have had the opportunity to raise objections. But that is not the rationale in this case.
The fact that the applicants for the mark have no plans to ask Bjørnar Moxnes for approval does not mean that they will be refused again.
– Basically, it is our first allegation that this application designates the parliamentary representative. But if they lodge a complaint about it, we will take a completely new assessment of it.
Football stars are not spared
Of similar cases, Bostad points out that someone has applied to have the name “Martin Ødegaard” registered as a trademark for a wide range of product classes.
– There we wrote to the applicant before the applicant had paid, and referred to this provision to appoint a specific person, says Bostad.
Basically, therefore, the application for the footballer’s name will not go through either.
It did, however, when a 30-year-old from Oslo secured the trademark name “Haaland”. Earlier this year, however, the Manchester City star got consent to apply for the brand in your own namewhen he was supposed to register “Erling Haaland”.
The Patent Office has previously refused the word mark JELZIN for vodka, even though it was not even exactly similar to the surname of Russia’s first president Boris Yeltsin.
2023-08-26 11:32:19
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