The Trademark Appeal Court of the Federal Patent Court rejected the complaint 25 W (pat) 528/18 of the applicant for the trademark application "BI-Hub" on October 14, 2019. The trademark office of the GPTO rejected the trademark application "BI-Hub" due to its lack of distinctive character and an existing need to be kept free, which is why the applicant filed a complaint.

In support of the rejection, the GPTO stated that the trademark application is composed of the letter combination "BI" and the English word "hub". The letter combination "BI" abbreviates the term "Business Intelligence", which has been used since the 1990s and refers to electronic methods and processes for the systematic analysis of data. The word "hub" in the English language originally meant a (wheel) hub or a node. In electronics or in network technology, the term "hub" also denotes a switching system between LAN segments and terminals. A "hub" in this context is a concentration point or a network node for a star-shaped wiring to form logical LANs.

The Federal Patent Court agreed with the GPTO to the extent that the trademark application with said combination of words represents a technical term in business informatics and designates different methods of data analysis. In that regard, the combination of words will not cause any difficulties in understanding for the skilled person in the field of business informatics in conjunction with the goods and services claimed.

Thus, the trademark application “BI-Hub” represents the description of the nature and destination of goods and services as such, i.e. in relation to goods in Class 9 (software) and IT services in Classes 38 and 42 and is consequently not eligible for protection.