Legal ruling over Ferrari 250 GTO design
 

It appears that Ferrari have been taken to court and have lost their trademark to the design of the 250 GTO

Ares Design took Ferrari to the Cancellation Division of the European Union Intellectual Protection Office, arguing Ferrari had not put the contested trademark to genuine use for a continuous period of five years.

The case was based on 'Article 58(1)(a) EUTMR', where a European Union trademark can be revoked if, within a continuous period of five years, the trademark has not been put to genuine use.

No doubt Ferrari will appeal the decision but I'm sure some replica manufacturers will be interested in the ruling.

A couple of articles about the story are:
https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/...tml?mrn_rm=rta
https://www.autoevolution.com/news/f...st-145717.html

I know Ferrari lost the Testarossa trade mark for similar reasons. This is slightly different I think because Ferrari had trade marked the shape of the 250 GTO and hence the main reason why it couldn't be replicated closely or even roughly !
This will probably set a precedent for their other older models that will never appear again in the same size and shape.

Good news for some of the manufacturers out there who have been forced to stop offering replicas.

I’ve read that Ferrari have managed to protect the term 250 GTO though. Weird that one article said that there were only 36 built. One of them lives not two miles from my house and never realized they were that rare (and it’s real, the guy owns porsches, lotus race cars, Jag race cars etc).

I was reading recently that ‘Land Rover’ recently tried to protect the shape of the Defender due to that billionaire who is doing the ‘New Defender’ and they got turned away as well.

Weird that they never had it protected.

Some of the people commenting mentioned that the original Mini didn’t have the shape protected either. Makes you wonder how many other classic Marques don’t.

I understand the Aston M only own the rights to some (but not all) of their designs. I wonder if that’s because of outsourcing some like the Zagato?