ken-wolter-shutterstock-com-10
23 October 2015Trademarks

EU court says HP CTM applications are descriptive

The EU General Court has rejected two Community trademark (CTM) applications filed by technology company HP.

Yesterday, October 22, the court ruled that the terms ‘ Elitepad’ and ‘ Elitedisplay’ are descriptive in connection with computer hardware. The ‘Elitepad’ application covered personal laptops and tablet computers and the application for ‘Elitedisplay’ covered computer monitors.

HP applied for ‘Elitepad’ in November 2012 and ‘Elitedisplay’ in February 2013.

Both applications were rejected by an examiner at the Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market (OHIM) on the grounds that they were descriptive.

HP appealed against OHIM’s decision but its Second Board of Appeal upheld the rejection of both applications last year.

HP then took the case to the General Court arguing that the term ‘pad’ does not immediately refer to computer hardware in the minds of consumers and that the association with a “touch panel or pad on a computer would require some reflection”.

The term ‘elite’, HP argued, referred to a group of individuals by their qualities. Overall, it argued the term ‘Elitepad’ is not part of ordinary language and, therefore, cannot be considered descriptive.

On the question of the ‘Elitedisplay’ CTM application, HP argued that OHIM’s examiners were wrong to break down the word into ‘elite’ and ‘display’ when assessing if the term is descriptive. Instead, consumers usually consider marks as a whole, HP claimed.

But on both counts, the General Court was not convinced and in two separate opinions rejected HP’s appeals.

The court said that both CTM applications “did not constitute an unusual variation from a syntactic or semantic view, and that that combination would not result in a specific meaning different from that conveyed by the two components. It is common in English to create words by coupling together two words each of which has a meaning”.

In its final ruling, the court affirmed OHIM’s ruling that both marks were too descriptive to be granted protection.

Already registered?

Login to your account

To request a FREE 2-week trial subscription, please signup.
NOTE - this can take up to 48hrs to be approved.

Two Weeks Free Trial

For multi-user price options, or to check if your company has an existing subscription that we can add you to for FREE, please email Adrian Tapping at atapping@newtonmedia.co.uk