South Korea's Supreme Court recently decided to allow an antiquated name for coffee to be used as the name of a coffee shop, officials said Tuesday.

The court ruled in favor of the plaintiff surnamed Hong, who challenged an earlier decision by the Intellectual Property Trial and Appeal Board that invalidated his 2015 trademark to use "Yangtangguk" as the name of his new cafe. Yangtangguk, which literally translates as "Western soup," was the name used during the Joseon era (1392-1910) for coffee.

A local coffee franchise requested nullification of his trademark, saying that yangtangguk should not be used exclusively by an individual since it refers to coffee itself.

Hong appealed, winning the case in the Intellectual Property High Court as well as the country's highest court.

"It cannot be definitively said that the consumer would perceive a certain product as the item that the specific product represents (perceiving yangtangguk as coffee), just because the product uses the previously used name," the court said in its verdict.

The court said a trademark cannot be invalidated unless it is proven that a consumer would intuitively perceive yangtangguk as coffee.

This marked the first ruling in which the Supreme Court specified that using an antiquated name of a certain product in itself does not constitute invalidation of a trademark.