‘NEHERA’ was a well-known fashion brand that Jan Nehera founded in the erstwhile Czechoslovakia in the 1930s, which made and sold ready-to-wear clothing. NEHERA was registered as a trademark in 1936. In 1946, after the Second World War, the company was taken over by the Germans, and its name changed (no longer including the Nehera name) in 1946 when it was nationalised, with the company’s ownership transferring to the Czechoslovak state. Jan Nehera emigrated to Morocco, where he ran two shops, and died in 1958.
Many decades later, in 2006, Ladislav Zdút, a young Slovak with no connection to the Nehera family, decided to “relaunch” the NEHERA brand. He registered a Czech trademark and subsequently, in 2013, an EU trademark. In 2014, he began presenting a womenswear collection at fashion shows under the NEHERA brand name. Zdút was aware of the past existence and reputation of the old Nehera brand and admitted that he “revived” and “resurrected” the brand in order to “pay a tribute” to it.
In 2019, three of Jan Nehera’s grandchildren filed an action before EUIPO seeking to have the NEHARA EU trademark invalidated, claiming that it had been filed “in bad faith”.
Source: Barandbench
