Trade mark for cemetery crosses cancelled

For more than 50 years, Sapanta, a Romanian village in the Maramures County in the northern part of Romania, has been famous for the unique way in which the local cemetery tells the story of the life of its inhabitants. Its initial creator - the craftsman Stan Ioan Patras - has done something that no one has ever done in Maramures, or elsewhere in the world: he has combined sculpture, colour and lyrics to turn this usually sad place into a joyful place to think, visit and remember. The unique character of the cemetery is created by the crosses, which are sculpted in oak wood, vividly painted and engraved with rhymed epitaphs describing the life of the deceased. In August 2008, Dumitru Pop Toader, one of the craftsmen that manufactures crosses for the Merry Cemetery filed with the State Office for Inventions and Trademarks (SOIT), a trade mark application consisting of the verbal element SIP DPT (standing for Stan Ioan Patras - Dumitru Pop Toader) and a figurative element representing the shape of the crosses in the Merry Cemetery, and claiming the blue color. The trade mark was filed for registration for products in class 20: furniture, frames, wooden products and wooden crosses.