Piaggio Group: Turin Court recognises the Vespa scooter as a work of industrial design and an iconic trademark of the company

The Piaggio Group said that yesterday, with a sentence that will go down in history, the Court of Turin had declared the full validity of the three-dimensional trademark of the Vespa scooter and recognised the specific creative nature and artistic value of the shape that has characterised the #scooter since it first went into production in 1946.

The sentence concludes a case that began in 2013 at the opening of the EICMA motorcycle show in Milan, when the Guardia di Finanza finance police corps – Rho arm, mobile unit – seized 11 scooters displayed by 7 different exhibitors, whose shapes imitated the #Vespa. The Guardia di Finanza carried out the seizure on the grounds that the products breached the Piaggio Group’s exclusive rights constituted by the so-called “three-dimensional trademark” registered by #Piaggio, which protects the distinctive Vespa shape. The trademark is fundamental for the defence of the unique distinctive Vespa lines, and the most complete safeguard for the iconic form of this global product.
One of the companies involved in the seizure, China’s Taizhou Zhongneng, began legal proceedings against Piaggio in Turin, requesting the cancellation of the trademark constituted by the scooter’s three-dimensional shape and asking the court to rule out the possibility of falsification of the trademark itself with respect to the “Ves” scooter seized at the EICMA show, but yesterday’s sentence rejected the petition and closed the case.