The court judged that the registration was unlawful, despite the fact that there are no specific rules for personal names. The marketing agency had obviously been acting in bad faith since they knew of Roy Donders’ existence. The consequences of all this was that the trademark registration was cancelled and the real Roy Donders was free to register his name as a trademark. Fortunately this case was in line with previous case law on such matters and demonstrates that hijacking someone’s name, despite a lack of legislation, is not a profitable activity in the Benelux.
