Colombian coffee dispute reaches boiling point
The European General Court has reversed the Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market’s (OHIM) decision to reject an invalidity claim filed by the Federación Nacional de Cafeteros de Colombia against a Lebanese competitor.
On Friday, September 18, the court annulled OHIM’s decision to reject the Federación’s opposition against Lebanon-based coffee company Accelerate’s Community trademark (CTM).
The Federación is a trade association that represents Colombian coffee growers.
At the centre of the dispute is Accelerate’s figurative CTM. The mark, which Accelerate was granted in 2010, shows an image of a mug of coffee inside a sun. Underneath the sun are the words ‘Colombiano Coffee House’.
The CTM covers two different classes: class 30, which covers goods including tea, cocoa, sugar, and rice, and class 43, which covers services that provide food and drink, including bars and restaurants.
In 2011, the Colombian group opposed the CTM on the grounds that it is too similar to its own geographical indication (GI). According to the general court, the company obtained a GI for the term ‘Café de Colombia’ in 2006.
OHIM’s Fifth Board of Appeal rejected the Federación’s opposition last year on the grounds that Accelerate’s CTM did not cover the “same class of product”. OHIM used guidelines outlined in article 14 of EU Regulation No. 510/2006, which protects GIs.
In May 2014, the Federación appealed against the ruling and argued that applying article 14 was incorrect. Instead, OHIM should have applied article 13 of the regulation, which outlines that a GI owner can oppose “misuse” of a similar name or mark containing a “false or misleading indication as to the provenance, origin, nature or essential qualities of the product”.
The court agreed.
“It follows that the error committed by the board of appeal in so far as it applied article 14 of regulation 510/2006, and not article 13, is liable to have a decisive effect on the outcome of the application for a declaration of invalidity,” the court wrote.
In the court’s decision, it annulled OHIM’s ruling.
