Chili v. Paprika: Hungarian Media Companies in Trademark Clash

The Budapest Court of Appeal has recently upheld Metropolitan Court’s decision establishing that TV2 Zrt., a Hungarian media company owned by Hungarian producer and government film commissioner Andy Vajna, infringed a trademark owned by its competitor, AMC Networks.

In 2016, TV2 launched a cooking channel called Chili TV, and AMC, the owner of TV Paprika® national and EU trademark, which is the name of AMC’s cooking channel, filed a trademark infringement lawsuit.

In the course of the lawsuit, the law firm representing AMC Networks submitted the results of an opinion poll showing that, when asked what they thought chili was, 95% of 1,000 respondents answered paprika or described paprika in their own words. The court ruled that there is a likelihood of confusion between the two words or TV channel names and ordered TV2 to stop using the word combination Chili TV and chilitv.tv domain name.

TV2 has already renamed its cooking channel to LiChi TV and is in the process of registering this new trademark.

Prepared by: Tatjana Krivszka and Szilvia Pongrácz

For more information, please contact hungary@petosevic.com.

Source: Hungarian news portal 24.hu