Palestinian clothing manufacturer prevented from registering its brand following Diesel lawsuit

The Israeli Registrar of Patents, Designs and Trademarks has upheld a claim by international fashion house Diesel against a Palestinian Authority company that attempted to register the trademark “EZEL JEANS WEAR”.

Registrar Mordechai Sorek ruled that the mark was misleading due to its similarity to the trademarks of a well-known brand and was not registrable.

During the trial, the mark applicant attempted to argue that there was no similarity between the names because EZEL should be pronounced “Etzel” based on the claim of German origin. However, Diesel has proven that in German and Dutch the word is pronounced “I-zel”, sounding almost identical to the name “Diesel”.

Additional confirmation of the pronunciation of the mark was found in the defendant’s own TikTok videos presented as evidence by Diesel: in marketing videos, company representatives pronounced the brand name as “ee-zel”, which is phonetically reminiscent of the name Diesel.

During the proceedings, the defendant attempted to explain that he had chosen the name Ezel, which means “donkey” in German and Dutch, because “under certain circumstances, ‘donkey’ when applied to a person can be seen as a kind of compliment.”

However, the registrar rejected this position, ruling that any reasonable person would understand the nickname as a clear insult rather than as an expression of respect, and that the defendant himself did not believe this version.

As a result, the application to register the trademark was rejected, and the PA company was ordered to pay court costs and attorneys’ fees in the amount of about 42,000 shekels.