To be legally-protected, a trademark must fulfill the following basic conditions:

• It must be a distinctive sign
• It cannot be descriptive for the specified goods and services, or their characteristics, for which registration is sought
• It cannot be misleading
• It cannot be contrary to public standards of decency or morality, or correspond with a flag or symbol, etc., protected by the Paris Convention.

Additionally, the trademark should be available for use and must not infringe third parties’ prior rights. However, very few EU trademark offices – upon their own initiative – refuse applications due to similar earlier rights (i.e., use citations). This means that earlier trademark holders have to rely more on regional and national opposition systems to prevent the registration of similar or identical trademarks.