The Inconsistent Reality of Certifying Trade Marks: How Certification Marks Are Failing Their Truth Ideals

<p>Certification marks occupy a unique role in the trade mark law landscape. These collectively used marks indicate that products bearing them have been attested as meeting a particular standard or having a specified quality, as divorced from source. Unlike ordinary trade marks, certification marks convey a specific truth about the quality or nature of a product. Despite certification marks being idealised to fulfil a different, more truthful role than ordinary trade marks, this is not always the reality of how certification marks exist in practice. This paper identifies numerous discrepancies between the legal conception of certification marks and how the certification marks are regulated and used in practice, and concludes that there are significant problems with the certification mark system. This paper introduces analytical and conceptual distinctions to delineate the ways in which the existence of certification marks departs from the legal norms that shape certification mark law. A closer interrogation of the use and practice of certification marks reveals a range of ways in which certification marks are less credible and informative to the average consumer than anticipated by the conventional account that justifies their protection. By examining the certification marks as part of trade mark law in the EU and the UK, this paper concludes that the certification mark system is failing to live up to its truth ideals.</p>