Pindrama!

The U.S.-based social networking site has lost a challenge it made to claim the Pinterest trademark in the region, with a European trademark court ruling in favor of the current owner, a London-based social news aggregation startup called Premium Interest and its founder Alex Hearn.

Part of reason why, it seems, has to do with timing: Pinterest was already active by the time Premium Interest filed for a trademark in January 2012, but it had yet to formally enter the European market, let alone file a trademark. In fact, Premium Interest filed its trademark in Europe some two months before Pinterest had even gotten its act together in the U.S. to file for a trademark there.

The OHIM also determined that documents that were submitted within deadline only proved that the media was buzzing about Pinterest — but not that the general public in the UK or elsewhere in Europe were — or simply didn’t provide enough detail to show they supported the relevant timeframes.

Pinterest could still get an opening in the case on an appeal — when it would presumably not miss the submission deadline and provide documents that more clearly proved that it was already a well-enough-known entity in the UK and elsewhere in Europe before January 2012 (when Premium Interest first filed its mark).