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25 February 2016Trademarks

Adidas prevails in two-stripe CTM opposition at the CJEU

Europe’s highest court has affirmed Adidas’s opposition to a two-stripe Community trademark (CTM) application, ending a long-running dispute with the Belgian footwear company Shoe Branding.

The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) dealt a final blow to Shoe Branding’s CTM application last week. The opinion was published yesterday, February 24.

Shoe Branding filed the CTM application in 2009 in connection with footwear. Adidas opposed the application.

Initially, the Opposition Division at the Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market and the First Board of Appeal sided with the Belgian company.

But its fortunes were reversed following a judgment from the EU General Court that the mark would cause a likelihood of confusion between the two brands.

Shoe Branding appealed against the judgment arguing that the different length of the stripes on each brand of shoes was sufficient to distinguish the brands. The General Court failed to assess the overall impression of the mark in its analysis, and instead focused on the individual components of the mark, it argued.

The CJEU dismissed the appeal, ruling that the General Court “took account of the difference in the length of stripes resulting from their angle and found that the difference did not influence the overall impression produced”.

The Belgian company had also argued on appeal that its two-stripe brand had co-existed with Adidas’s mark over multiple decades with no evidence of confusion. But the CJEU said that because Shoe Branding failed to raise the argument with the General Court, the lower court was correct in not acknowledging this factor in its ruling.

A spokesperson for Adidas told WIPR: "We welcome the decision. We are grateful the court recognised the importance of protecting our valuable trademark. We will continue to protect our trademarks and fight any unlawful behaviour."

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