Certification marks

A certification mark aims at distinguish specific goods produced by a specific trader from the ones which are not. Therefore, we should refer to them as proper “marks of distinction”.

Generally, marks use distinctive symbols which are under national regulations, adopted by enterprises, unions or associations. In the case the symbol belongs to a private organization, it must comply with what established in the related code of regulation which is different for each body but commonly contains useful information regarding firm policy and quality standards.

Just to make some examples, we can mention the following organizations:

-         Italian Institute on toy safety: it provide firms with the mark “safety toy” after rigorous reliability tests;

-         Italian Union “Real leather” vegetably tanned: the Union applies a special tag to those leather goods produced with a special method, making periodic controls;

-         Professional Association: some associations have their own code of conduct which they refer to throughout their professional behaviour. In these cases, an internal committee is created in order to verify the enforcement of the code.

It is important to distinguish a simple mark from a registered mark, which is specially protected from the law in order to avoid imitations or falsifications.

On the other hand, the “quality mark” state that a product comply with specific rules. 

The Italian Code on Industrial Property (Decree n. 30 of 10 February 2005), from article 7 to 28, established some rules on marks. In particular, the article 7 states that “each firm can choose as mark any graphic symbol, such as words – including one’s personal name or surname -, paintings, letters, numbers, sounds, product shape or packaging in order to distinguish its own product from others”.

A registered mark must comply with the following characteristics:

-         originality: mark must not be previously adopted or contain symbols which are commonly used;

-         ability of distinction: a firm must not register as its own mark symbols lacking of distinction or containing only some general description of the product sold, because the purpose of a mark is to clearly differentiate a product from others;

-         conformity with the law in force: it cannot be registered neither a mark whose symbols breaks laws, public order and morals, nor a mark which aims at misleading costumers with regard to product origin, nature and quality or at violating someone else’s copyrights.

The mark remains registered during 10 years from its registration, renewable for other 10 years.

A mark is not valid if:

a)   is lacking of one of the requirement above;

b)   if a judicial pronunciation states that the body which registered the mark is different from the one entitled to.

A mark stops being valid:

a)   if it might mislead costumers about product origin, nature or quality, due to the way it has being used by the owner;

b)   if it started to be against rules, public order and morals;

c)    due to the breach, by the related monitoring Authority, of compulsory provisions regarding the use of the mark.

If the invalidating events above do not regard the whole production of a firm but only a part, the invalidation will concern only this part.
 

The quality mark aims at ensuring that a product possesses certain characteristics or that it was produced following a specific procedure.

There are lots of mark categories, of which we can mention:

-         Marks regulated by an Italian specific law;

-         Marks of professional associations, such as touristic marks;

-         Marks of unions and private associations, which aim at identify a group of firms producing the same good or using the same material for their productions;

-         Certification marks, provided by specialized bodies to those firms who comply to specific rules;

-         Marks of government-controlled enterprises, such as in energetic, postal or transportations fields;

-         Marks regulated and managed by the European Commission, used within Member States.