EU court blocks TM protection for twisted cheese stick
The EU General Court has denied a Turkish dairy company trademark protection for the shape of a cheese stick, consisting of separate pieces twisted together.
The judgments, issued last Thursday, March 26, affirm the previous ruling of the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO), which held that there was nothing distinctive about the shape of the cheese.
Turkish cheesemaker Muratbey Gida Sanayi ve Ticaret applied for three separate trademarks covering the shape of the cheese, which is a slender cylindrical stick of several pieces of cheese twisted together.
The shape is common to a number of cheeses advertised on Muratbey’s website. Muratbey argued that it was the first company to make a stick out of different pieces of cheese that is capable of holding together on its own, and noted that it had won a World Dairy Innovation Award 2018 for its efforts.
But according to the General Court, “novelty or originality are not relevant criteria for the assessment of the distinctive character of a mark”.
Prizes such as the World Dairy Innovation Award would only be relevant if they were based on the perception of consumers, the court said.
The General Court instead backed the EUIPO’s original finding that “cheese sticks” or similar shapes are common across the dairy sector, and were therefore not capable of functioning as a trademark to indicate Muratbey as the source of the goods.
The court agreed that, in the eyes of the average consumer, there would not be an inherent association between Muratbey and the twisted cheese shape.
Muratbey has successfully registered the shape as a trademark in Germany, but the court said that, while relevant, the EUIPO was not bound by the decisions of individual EU member states.
The court ordered Muratbey to bear costs for the proceedings.
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