The German legal battle over the "Black Friday" trademark.

Since 1952, Black Friday, generally known as the day after Thanksgiving, has been considered the start of the holiday shopping season in the United States. Today, retailers in several countries around the world offer promotional sales during Black Friday weekend. In Germany, Apple was the first company to run a special Black Friday campaign for the German market back in 2006.

In the wake of the increased awareness of Black Friday, an application for trademark protection under the Black Friday trademark was filed in Germany in 2013 by Hong Kong-based Super Union Holdings Ltd. Co., which licensed the "Black Friday" trademark to Black Friday GmbH, a company based in Vienna.

Since 2016, Super Union Holdings Ltd. has been targeting companies using the term Black Friday by sending warnings, such as to the U.S. e-commerce marketplace Groupon in 2016, as well as to the owners of the platform black-friday.de, which features Black Friday deals.

In 2017, Super Union Holdings Ltd. sued Amazon for using the "Black Friday" sign in Germany, seeking, among other things, damages.

Certainly, some companies, affected by the attacks by Super Union Holdings Ltd., have begun to react, and to date, more than a dozen cancellation actions are pending against the German Black Friday brand.

The Düsseldorf court recently issued an order denying the owner of the Black Friday trademark the right to trademark protection.

In Germany, as in many other countries, the principle applies according to which a trademark can be cancelled if the sign is descriptive, and the heart of the legal battle seems to revolve precisely around this principle.

There will be new developments soon.