Sony is suing Huawei for the term GT in a smart watch. This belongs to the game Gran Turismo

Trademarks of Watch GT or the use of this designation in general are appropriated by Huawei. It has built its entire smart watch division. However, Sony claims that GT belongs to him.

GT or Gran Turismo?

The whole dispute is absurd from Huawei’s point of view. Namely, the use of the “GT” designation for smart watches has been going on for some time now, and Sony has so far unsuccessfully challenged Huawei, including a lawsuit filed at the European Union level. Although the lawsuit was filed in August this year, as early as 2016 Sony has appealed against the Huawei 3 trademark GT 3 and GT 5.

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Sony has its own game development center for its Polyphony Digital console. And this is the center behind Gran Turismo. While it may sound extremely hair-raising, the acronym GT also seems important to Sony. And since GT wants to use Huawei, Sony initiates opposition to the trademarks and claims that the abbreviation belongs to a Japanese company. Despite the fact that Sony will try to stop Huawei again in 2019 after the first objection, the Chinese giant is launching the Watch GT and GT 2. So far, Sony’s activities are unsuccessful, the European court is waiting to look at the case from from the point of view of Union law. However, this is still a premature question, the lawsuit has not been on the table for even two months. Sony will try to beat Huawei in two separate disputes, one initiated on the GT 3 designation and the other on the GT 5.

So Sony has been basically repeating that since 2016 their trade mark is not only linked to the phrase Gran Turismo but also to the abbreviation GT. In addition, it uses just such a label on its website, which will probably be a rather significant stumbling block. It will be difficult to prove that GT is actually an acronym for Gran Turismo. Huawei also uses the GT connection with a different name, not separately. In fact, many other companies use “GT” in their products.

If this were to turn out positively for Sony and the European court ruled in favor of the Japanese company, then any merger and designation containing “GT” should have a problem and the company would have a potential dispute with Sony. This does not seem likely.