MOSONG, a Fuzzy Logic Model of Trade Mark Similarity

Abstract

This paper describes MOSONG, a knowledge-based system prototype implementing a model of an open-textured legal rule using fuzzy logic. The legal domains modeled by MOSONG are the relative grounds of refusal of registration of European Community trade marks. Second-order fuzziness is used in MOSONG as a representation of uncertainty. MOSONG was constructed to resolve a training set of 119 cases correctly, and in subsequent tests with a validation set of 30 cases, a correct solution was produced for all of them as well. In questionnaire-based follow-up tests with non-expert users (n=75), however, only 54.6±6.5% of all cases received the correct answer, and 25.97±5% an incorrect one.

Keywords: trade mark law, Community trade mark, trade mark similarity, uncertainty, vagueness, fuzzy logic