EU General Court backs Scor in insurance TM dispute

A Lithuanian company has been blocked by the  EU General Court from registering its logo as an EU trademark, in a victory for French reinsurance company  Scor.

The court ruled today, July 8, that Vilnius-based Scorify’s brand was likely to cause confusion in the insurance market with Scor’s.

The ruling also affirms two previous decisions by the European Union Intellectual Property Office’s (EUIPO) opposition division and fourth board of appeal.

Scorify filed to register a logo featuring the name of the company as an EU trademark in 2017, covering various services in the fields of insurance, finance and real estate.

The application was successfully opposed by Scor, which convinced the EUIPO there was a likelihood of confusion with its own brand.

Scorify argued on appeal at the EU General Court that the ‘scor’ element common to both trademarks was indistinctive, and that the EUIPO was wrong to dismiss the other elements of its logo as “purely decorative”.

In today’s judgment, a panel of General Court judges ruled that the EUIPO was correct to assess the word element of Scorify’s mark as being more significant than the “simple geometric form” that made up the rest of the logo.

Scorify argued that, despite the similarities, “the marks at issue could coexist freely without raising any doubts on the part of the average consumer” as to the origin of each company’s respective services.

But according to the court, “without supporting evidence, [those arguments] are manifestly insufficient to demonstrate that the marks coexist peacefully on the market”.

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