On 13 March 2024, the General Court (3rd and 7th Chamber) issued two judgments dealing with weak marks in the sense the most trademark practitioners applaud, namely granting descriptive elements in trademarks only a minimal scope of protection. In both cases, this led to the GC confirming the decisions of the Fifth Board of Appeal…
On AG Szpunar’s Opinion in Case C-801/22 P BASMATI was the first of the appeals to the CJEU in the three „Brexit cases“. The other two are APE TEES (EUIPO v Nowhere, C-337/22 P) and SHOPPI (Shopify v EUIPO, C-751/22 P, see here and here)). The CJEU allowed all three appeals to proceed, and in…
Part 1 of this year’s retrospective provided a general overview over the GC case law from 2023 with numbers and a special focus on genuine use cases. Part 2 now focuses on weak marks. The reader is asked for forgiveness for the unusual length of this post… On social media (in particular LinkedIn), one could…
The year is ending and so it is time, once again, to look at what has been coming out of the General Court (GC) over the past 12 months. While the numbers here are only approximate, resulting from searches on the Curia website and on Darts-ip, they do give an idea of what the GC…
As expected, in its decision of 21 December 2022 (T-44/22), the General Court (GC) upheld the refusal of the packaging design shown above on the right as a trademark for tobacco products in class 34, agreeing with the EUIPO that it would take unfair advantage of the reputation of the Marlboro rooftop mark. The trademark…
At a time when New Year’s resolutions to exercise more fizzle out for lack of motivation, many people realise what the General Court (GC) already knew: sport and entertainment do not necessarily have to go hand in hand. In the BIMBA TOYS case (21 December 2022, T-129/22), the GC confirmed the decision of the Fourth…
This is the Kluwer Blog Team wishing all our readers a Happy New Year – and providing the by now traditional yearly review of Luxembourg cases. 2022 was again a busy year for the courts in Luxembourg. The EUIPO Case Law search tool lists 283 decisions in trademark and 13 in designs handed down by…
Not many cases make it to the Grand Board of Appeal of the EUIPO. The ICELAND cases did, including the first oral hearing ever before the Grand Board attracting lots of attention. There has been a policy discussion for quite some time regarding the registrability of country names as trademarks, and the ICELAND cases…
As expected, frankly wished for, and previously reported on this blog (see here), the EUIPO appealed the General Court’s Ape Tees decision (T-281/21) to the Court of Justice. The Court allowed this appeal to proceed on 16 November 2022, recognising that the appeal raises issues relating to the fundamental principles of “unity, consistency and development…
EUTM 17981629 in the name of Pest Control Office Limited In May 2021, the Cancellation Division of the EUIPO declared the registration of Banksy’s Monkey image invalid on grounds of bad faith. The trademark owner appealed and on 25 October 2022, the Fifth Board annulled the decision and refused the cancellation action, ruling not…
