Order of Conservative Lawyers of Brazil must suspend capture and use of name and logo similar to those of the OAB

Understanding that the Order of Conservative Lawyers of Brazil (OACB) uses acronyms and symbols similar to those belonging to the Order of Lawyers of Brazil, judge Diego Câmara, of the 17th Federal Court of the Federal District, ordered the association to immediately suspend any activity providing legal services and advertising to attract clients.

The judge also prohibited the association from using the name “Ordem dos Advogados Conservadores do Brasil – OACB” under penalty of a daily fine of R$20,000.

The decision was caused by a public civil action filed by the Federal Council of the OAB. The entity maintains that lawyers who are part of the OACB could only provide services to the association itself, and their use to attract clients for individual benefit is prohibited.

The National OAB also maintains that article 16 of the Law Statute (Law 8,906/94) establishes that law firms that have the form or characteristics of a business company, that adopt a trade name or carry out activities outside the scope of law are prohibited.

When analyzing the case, the judge pointed out that the similarity between the acronym and logo of the private entity with those used by the OAB could mislead society.

According to him, the comparison between the visual identity of the OAB, established years ago, and that of the OACB, recently created, corroborates “the argument for the existence of proximity capable of generating confusion or misleading people with less legal and institutional knowledge who, for chance, will have access to the publications referenced in this procedural notebook or even seek some of the services made available by the class council”.

The judge also cited screenshots that demonstrate that the entity that seeks to bring together conservative lawyers has made posts on the internet that encourage the sending of videos, photos or any other type of offensive post to former president Jair Bolsonaro (PL), his family and members of your government to your email address. In the same posts, the association states that its team of lawyers will arrange for the forwarding of crime reports against the perpetrators of the offenses.

“Thus, the exposed factual framework indicates that the requested association would have been acting, whether directly or through its associates, in the provision of legal services, in a situation capable of configuring, in the latter case, a hypothesis of attracting clientele, embodied in the redirection of the potential causes that he was aware of to the prosecutors on his staff”, he summarized.

Click here to read the decision
Process 1010970-27.2021.4.01.3400