Having evaluated trademarks registered by Latvian applicants in Latvia and the European Union in the FOURTH quarter 2025, an expert committee of the Latvian Patent Office (LPO) selected the next eight candidates for the main prize of the Trademark of the Year 2025 award. With a series of publications, we are introducing the companies – owners of creative, expressive and strong trademarks that are the candidates for the main prize in various nomination categories.
Nomination: Trademark of the Year for Latvia
Category: Figurative Marks
Popular character in Latvia will now be a protected trademark – Cūkmens
The state-owned company “Latvijas valsts meži” (Latvian State Forests) was founded in October 1999 to implement the state’s interests in forest management. The company’s core business is forestry. In addition to offering wood products, it also provides hunting and recreation services, produces selected seeds and seedlings for forest regeneration, offers mineral products and land leases for mineral extraction, and provides geospatial information technology services.
The origin of the trademark name dates back to 2005, when the Cūkmens (Pigman) character was created as part of the company’s campaign “Do Not Litter in the Forest!”.
“Cūkmens personifies the problem of waste and forest polluters. The defender of clean forests fights against pollution and other unacceptable behaviour in the forest, targeting specifically children and young audiences,” explains the company's communication specialist Renāte Ribaka.
Since 2005, Cūkmens has educated more than 100 thousand kindergarteners as part of a special eco-program.
Nomination: Trademark of the Year for the European Union
Category: Word Marks
Trademark name created from the names of company founders – RAMCO
RAMCO is a Latvian freight forwarding and logistics company founded in 2017. The trademark with the same name of RAMCO was registered in 2025.
The trademark name is formed from the first letters of the company’s co-founders' names – R for Rihards, A for Artūrs, M for Māris, and CO for the company team. The idea has been to avoid names that are commonly used in the industry.
“Each of us, being the company’s leader, has a personal responsibility towards our clients, partners, employees and society, and this is reflected in our name. The chosen sequence is not accidental - it sounds convincing, it is easy to remember, and it fits for the international business environment,” explains the company's co-founder and board member Rihards Bilzēns.
The procedure for the LPO’s Trademark of the Year award is organized in two stages. First, once a quarter, experienced LPO experts select four trademarks in the Trademark of the Year for Latvia nomination and four trademarks – in the Trademark of the Year for the European Union nomination that are further forwarded for the second evaluation stage. The winner of the Trademark of the Year 2025 award will be determined among 16 trademarks registered with the LPO under the national procedure and 16 trademarks registered with the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO).