MANILA -- The Supreme Court has ruled in favor of the majority owners of Gloria Maris Shark’s Fin Restaurant owners over an intellectual property row involving the company’s name and logo.

In a decision promulgated by the 3rd Division on May 20, 2024, the high court granted the petition for review on certiorari filed by Gloria Maris Shark’s Fin Restaurant, Inc.  The Supreme Court reversed the ruling of the Court of Appeals which favored one of the company’s incorporators, Pacifico Lim.

In the decision, the SC ordered the cancellation of certificates of registration over the Gloria Maris trademark, consisting of the words “Gloria Maris” with a logo of a shark’s fin enclosed in a plate in the name of Lim.

In 1994, Gloria Maris was registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission with five incorporators, including Lim. 

Lim was entrusted by the board of directors to register the trademark with the Intellectual Property Office or IPO.  But the board members later on discovered that the trademark was registered with the IPO only in 2005 and in Lim’s name, not “Gloria Maris”. 

Gloria Maris sought to cancel the registration before the Bureau of Legal Affairs or BLA of the IPO.  The BLA ruled in favor of Lim, stating that Lim created the trademark in 1993 and the trademark application was in Lim’s name as published in the IPO Gazette.

The decision of the BLA however was reversed by the Office of the Director General after Gloria Maris filed an appeal. When the case went to the Court of Appeals, the ruling of the BLA in favor of Lim was reinstated, which prompted Gloria Maris to bring the matter to the Supreme Court.  

The Supreme Court ruled that Lim registered the Gloria Maris trademark in bad faith.

“It has been held that fraud and bad faith, in terms of trademark, go hand-in-hand. In simple words, there is no distinction between these concepts since one necessarily presupposes the existence of the other,” the court said in the decision penned by Associate Justice Maria Filomena Singh.

The court also emphasized that Lim knew that Gloria Maris had been using the mark and name “Gloria Maris” for more than 10 years. Additionally, it held that a trademark registered in bad faith may be canceled for being unfair competition under the Intellectual Property Code.

“Thus, bad faith in the context of trademark registration means that the applicant or registrant has knowledge of prior creation, use and/or registration by another of an identical or similar trademark,” the court said.

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