Pompous of its victory against the Tofuking (reported here on Class 46), the King-that is the Curry King won yet another battle before the General Court in Judgment T-61/09.

In this case, the contested CTM SCHINKEN King, which refers to ‘ham’ in general in German and includes speck, bacon, pastrami etc, was registered for goods in Class 29. The Opposition Division and the Board of Appeal rejected the opposition given the visual and aural differences and the low distinctive character of earlier German and Community marks CURRY KING and KING.

The General Court annulled the contested decision, holding the structure in the signs gives a certain visual similarity and both signs are composed of two elements, the first one indicating a flavor and the second one being identical. Even though ‘curry’ and ‘schinken’ are conceptually different, they both refer to the food industry and are not antinomic. Thus, due to the low degree of similarity between with the contested CTM with earlier mark KING, likelihood of confusion cannot be excluded for identical goods.