Audi loses trademark court bid

A bid by German car maker Audi to register TDI as a trademark was thrown out by a European court today.

The three letters stand for Turbo Diesel Injection or Turbo Direct Injection and are increasingly common on the bootlids of many car marques.

And the judges said the acronym was just a characteristic of the car and did not qualify as a trademark.

Audi went to court because the EU’s trademark office refused to register “TDI” on the grounds that the term was “devoid of any distinctive character”.

Today the European Court of First Instance in Luxembourg agreed that signs which simply describe goods or services “are to be freely available to all, and may not be registered”.

The judges went on: “From the point of view of the public, TDI designates one of the characteristics of the cars and therefore cannot be registered as a Community trademark.

“Combinations of letters are commonly used in the motor industry and the form of the mark TDI is therefore not unusual.”

Audi has been bidding to register TDI since 1996, but the judges said turning it into a trademark would only be possible if such a sign had become “distinctive through use” in the entire European Union.

But Audi had produced no evidence to demonstrate that TDI was distinctive, rather than just descriptive.