OREANDA-NEWS. February 07, 2014. The Lasvet has said it has applied with the Estonian Patent Office to register the trademarks of Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, which owns the Sheraton luxury hotel chain.

The commission did not come from the owners of Sheraton directly but from a foreign patent agency representing the company's interests, Lasvet's patent attorney Villy Pavelts told Arileht today. He stressed that entering the market and registering a trademark are separate activities, therefore, he cannot comment on Sheraton's business plans.

Sheraton had planned to build a hotel in Estonia in the early 1990s, when the city government sold the company a plot next to Toompea Hill, but the project never materialized because of land ownership disputes.

Separately, the French hotel group Accor has said it plan to co-operate with the local real estate company PalmGrupp, currently looking for investors, to build a budget hotel and business class apartment hotel near the Rotermann Quarter in central Tallinn.