Recently, the five-year-long trademark dispute between Citroën and Polar Star has finally come to an end. The two sides reached a settlement on this matter privately, but because the agreement was not made public, the specific content of the settlement agreement was not known to the outside world, but it is certain that Polestar finally got rid of its sales restrictions in France since 2020 and can finally break into the French market.
Citroen is a veteran French car company, founded in 1915, has a history of 100 years. In contrast, Polestar is much younger, starting as a Volvo brand, and in 2017 announced independence as a new electric high-performance car brand.
Tracing back to the boiling dispute, which began in 2017, Citroën believed that the other party's trademark was infringing. Subsequently, after the Polestar brand announced its entry into the French market in 2019, Citroën immediately filed a lawsuit with the French court, holding that the LOGO used by the other brand was similar to the "double V" and the logo of the DS brand that the brand had been using since 1919, and the buyer would misunderstand this when consuming, so it demanded that Polestar stop using this logo and compensate 320,000 euros. PoleStar argued for this request, arguing that the trademarks of the two sides were not similar, while stressing that the European Trademark Office had rejected Citroën's allegations of infringement against itself.
Obviously, Citroën did not agree with Polestar's argument, and pointed out in the court trial that the difference between the logo used by Polestar and the brand was only that the "V-shaped" arrangement was different, and this degree of similarity had constituted infringement of its own trademark. Therefore, he insisted on his lawsuit against Polestar. In 2020, the French court finally made a judgment on this: the court held that although the relevance of the three LOGOs involved in the case "seems to be weak", Citroën, as an old French enterprise, has been using its LOGO for a long time and has a certain influence in France, and the LOGO used by Polarstar will indeed cause consumers to associate with Citroën when buying a car, so it is ruled that Polestar shall not use the LOGO in France for half a year in addition to paying relevant compensation costs.
Because of this ban, Polestar had to shelve its entry into the French market. So far, until the beginning of this year, the trademark ban has not been lifted, and Citroën has even applied for the ban on polestar trademarks throughout the European Union. In this settlement, no matter what, PoleStar finally obtained the right to use its own trademark, and the plan to enter the French market, which had been delayed for two years due to the judgment, could finally be put on the agenda.
Citroën's trademark infringement lawsuit because it believed that the Polar Star trademark would remind consumers of the brand was a key issue in trademark infringement - trademark confusion. Trademark confusion cannot be ignored, and enterprises should do a good job of searching in advance when conducting trademark layout, so as to reduce the possibility of trademark confusion and avoid hindering the pace of strategic planning of enterprise brands due to being involved in trademark infringement disputes.