Coffee trademarks increasingly growing in Honduras

By Bufete Mejía

Camilo Bendeck, general director of Intellectual Property of Honduras, said that the coffee industry has been one of the most active in trademark registration in the last three years.

"The reason is that coffee producers finally have the awareness of the importance of brands for competing both in the domestic and international markets", Bendeck said to newspaper La Prensa.

He added that in the last three years the General Direction of Intellectual Property of Honduras (Digepih, for its Spanish name) has granted applications "for at least 161 trademarks that included the word coffee as its prefix". Those trademarks do not include nearly 30 collective brands, geographical indications and appellations of origin that the Digepih has also granted.

According to Bendeck those numbers show that certified and branded coffee is an everyday more desired quality by consumers, and at the same time it generates more income, employment, education, health and tourism for the coffee industry and the country as a whole.