Laut gegen Nazis e.V., a German anti-fascist NGO, has registered neo-Nazi codes and abbreviations as EU trademarks—and used those registrations to force the closure of Druck18, Germany's largest online Nazi merchandise shop, according to a press release published in August 2025.

The strategy, called Rights Against the Right, was developed with Hamburg advertising agency Jung von Matt. It works through a legal lever most people associate with protecting brand names: trademark registration. By claiming ownership of the coded symbols that far-right vendors rely on, Laut gegen Nazis acquired the standing to block those vendors' commercial use of those marks—effectively strangling their ability to operate openly.

The Trademark Strategy

Neo-Nazi subcultures have long used coded language and numerology to circumvent the legal bans on explicit Nazi symbols that exist in Germany and parts of Europe. Abbreviations like "enness" (standing in for the initials of National Socialism) allow merchandise to circulate without triggering direct prohibition. Creative Review reported in February 2026 that these codes are deliberately designed to spread racist ideology while remaining below the legal threshold.

Rights Against the Right turned this evasion tactic around. By filing for trademark protection on the very codes that hate groups use, the campaign establishes legal priority over those marks. Any commercial operation—including an online shop like Druck18—that uses those marks on merchandise risks infringing on Laut gegen Nazis' intellectual property. The campaign also sells its own apparel using the trademarked codes, meeting the commercial-use requirement needed to maintain trademark registrations.

The Guardian noted in January 2024 that the group described its trademark filings as "just the beginning," signaling plans to expand beyond its initial registrations. The Druck18 action, announced more than a year later, appears to be the first major enforcement win.

Legal Terrain and Precedent

Trademark law is not naturally suited to this purpose. Registering offensive or ideologically charged marks has been contested in multiple jurisdictions. A 2017 U.S. Supreme Court ruling struck down restrictions on offensive trademarks in the Lanham Act, and Reuters reported that hate groups quickly filed for protection on their own symbols.

The EU system is structured differently. The EUIPO can reject marks that violate public policy or morality—yet Laut gegen Nazis secured these registrations, likely because examiners recognized the applicant's anti-fascist purpose. Whether the registrations would survive a legal challenge from a commercial entity is unclear; trademark offices and courts are not obligated to examine the political motive behind a filing.

What matters operationally is that the campaign does not need to win in court to impose costs. The mere threat of infringement proceedings deters smaller vendors, raises their compliance expenses, and weakens the commercial infrastructure that sustains extremist organizing. Druck18's shutdown shows how effective that pressure can be.

The broader context here involves a calculation about what tools can constrain the far right's organizing capacity. In May 2026, Australia criminalized the National Socialist Network under legislation banning designated hate groups—a direct approach targeting organizational existence rather than commerce. Commercial-law strategies like trademark work best in jurisdictions without such group-ban statutes; those with stronger legislative frameworks can pursue direct prohibition. The two approaches are not opposites; they can exist in parallel.

There is also a secondary effect worth considering. By publishing the trademarked codes through its own merchandise, Laut gegen Nazis exposes the decoder ring for neo-Nazi iconography, making what was meant to be covert language legible to a general audience. That transparency function—removing the operational obscurity that coded symbols depend on—may be as significant as any single legal action.

Whether EUIPO registration can be sustained at scale, as the campaign files for additional marks, will determine if this model becomes durable long-term.