A landmark ruling by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has put an end to a bitter trademark battle that raged for nearly 10 years between two factions of followers of Indian mystic Osho ‘Rajneesh’ (Chandra Mohan Jain).
In the January 13 ruling, the USPTO’s Trademark Trial and Appeal Board cancelled a series of trademarks with the word ‘Osho’ registered by Osho International Foundation (OIF, Zurich).
Osho Friends International, New Delhi, had filed a petition challenging these trademarks ten years ago.
The trademarks that stand cancelled include Osho, Osho active meditations, Osho zen tarot, Osho transformation tarot, Osho Kundalini meditation, Osho Nadbramha meditation, Osho meditation resort, Osho Multiversity, Osho Times and Osho Rebalancing.
“Plaintiff’s petition to cancel is hereby granted on the ground of genericness and mere descriptiveness,” the ruling by administrative trademark judges Charles Grendel, Peter W Cataldo and Tom Wellington said.
“The primary significance of Osho is as a religious or meditative movement, and not as a source identifier for goods and services,” the ruling stated.
The verdict has been widely hailed by Osho’s followers worldwide, particularly those who were in favour of free, unrestricted distribution of Osho’s works.
“We were fighting this battle for nearly 10 years and we are relieved,” OFI spokesperson Swami Chaitanya Keerti said while speaking to DNA.
The OFI website said: “Osho’s message is for the benefit of humanity and should essentially be in the free domain.”
Reacting to a ruling by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), the Pune-based Osho International Meditation Resort said that by describing Osho as “generic”, the USPTO had put him “in the same category as computers and tissues”.
Resort spokesperson Amrit Sadhana said the decision is appealable in American courts.
She accused the Friends of Osho of “applying to register ‘Osho’ as a trademark in India for their personal business.”
Representing the management team at the meditation resort, Sadhana said for more than 40 years, both during his life and afterwards, the Osho Foundations “had always acted on Osho’s request to protect his name, his copyright and his work and will continue to do so.”
She maintained Osho continues to be a protected trademark in more than 40 other countries around the world.
Sadhana also said that the USPTO’s ruling “has no effect on Osho’s copyright which is protected by international treaties around
the world.”
