Since December 2009, the European Court of First Instance has been known as the General Court. But the name change has not altered the pace at which decisions issue from the General Court and ECJ, say Chris McLeod and Florian Traub.
Since December 2009, the European Court of First Instance has been known as the General Court. But the name change has not altered the pace at which decisions issue from the General Court and ECJ, say Chris McLeod and Florian Traub.
In Agencja Wydawnicza Technopol sp. zo.o. v. OHIM, the then Court of First Instance (CFI) upheld the Office of Harmonisation for the Internal Market’s (OHIM) refusal of figurative marks that incorporated the numbers 100 and 300 respectively, printed in a bubble typeface with a yellow strip above the relevant number and a red ribbon below. Each application covered goods and services in classes 16, 28 and 41. Agencja also applied for registration of the marks 150, 250, 350, 1000, 222, 333 and 555 for goods in class 16.
In considering whether the relevant public would perceive a sufficiently direct link between the numbers and the goods, the CFI noted that the numbers alluded to a quantity such as the number of pages or works, an amount of data or the number of puzzles in a collection or, in respect of the 1000 mark, the ranking of items referred to in them. The association would be immediate for the relevant public and taken into consideration by the average consumer when making a purchase.
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CFI, ECJ, OHIM, USPTO, community trademarks, trademark regulation
