Third time unlucky for Swatch in CTM cancellation attempt

Luxury watch manufacturer Swatch has failed for a third time to cancel a Community trademark (CTM) for the word ‘Swatchball’ after a European court said the mark is directed at a separate market and will not cause confusion.

The General Court of the European Union ruled in favour of camera manufacturer Panavision yesterday (May 19) in its seven-year dispute with Swatch.

The camera company filed for the ‘Swatchball’ CTM in 2007 to be used for electronic publications and retail services. Its application was opposed by Swatch at the Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market in September 2008.

Swatch claimed the CTM is “confusingly similar” to its own word mark for ‘Swatch’, which covers watches, and three figurative marks for the word that were registered in 1986, 1994 and 1998.

The Opposition Division at OHIM rejected Swatch’s challenge in 2012.

A year later, the Second Board of Appeal at OHIM came to the same conclusion after Swatch appealed against the previous verdict.

Swatch then took the case the General Court.

But the Switzerland-based company has again failed to prove that the ‘Swatchball’ trademark will cause a “likelihood of confusion” with its own marks.

Although the court accepted that the marks are visually similar to an “average degree” and phonetically similar to a “low or average degree”, it said that the marks were intended for different audiences.

The court said: “The goods and services marketed by Panavision target a specialist public, whereas the goods covered by the earlier marks target the general public.

“The absence of similarity between the goods and services in question and the differences between their relevant publics ... are such that they are liable to exclude the existence of any link between the marks at issue,” it added.

Neither Swatch nor Panavision had responded to a request for comment at the time of publication.