CJEU cancels German asset management firm’s TM
The Court of Justice of the European Union ( CJEU) has dismissed a trademark appeal by a German asset-management company.
In its judgment yesterday, May 15, the CJEU upheld a ruling by the General Court that VM Vermögens-Management’s trademark should be invalidated on the grounds of lack of distinctiveness.
In 2009, VM Vermögens-Management applied to register the word ‘Vermögensmanufaktur’ for goods and services including advertising, business management, asset management and financial consultancy, in classes 35 and 36.
The registration was opposed by a competitor, DAT Vermögensmanagement, which sought to have the trademark invalidated.
In 2016, the EU General Court upheld a finding by the Fifth Board of Appeal of the European Intellectual Property Office that the applied-for mark was “descriptive and devoid of distinctive character”.
VM argued the General Court had incorrectly applied the law when it reached its conclusion.
In today’s judgment the CJEU said that in its appeal, VM Vermögens-Management had repeated the same arguments which it put forward to the General Court, without stating how the court erred in its judgement.
VM Vermögens-Management had argued that the word ‘manufaktur’ is used in everyday language in Germany only with regard to goods. It said that therefore, the combination of word ‘Vermögensmanufaktur’ will trigger, in the relevant public, “a process of reflection”.
But, the CJEU said the mark was “neither sufficiently original, nor resonant, nor has a formally unusual structure”, and that the public will not immediately associate the sign with the services that it designates.
It agreed with the General Court that the words “Vermögen’ and ‘Manufaktur’ in the applied-for mark, when combined, had a clear and unambiguous meaning: “asset manufacturing”.
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