The EU General Court upheld a finding that Hasbro acted in bad faith when it applied to register an EUTM for MONOPOLY, covering some of the goods and services covered by previous registrations (Case T-663/19). It found that Hasbro had "intentionally sought to circumvent the proof of use rule to derive an advantage". The Court emphasised that there is no prohibition on re-filing trade marks as such, but in this case "the aim of the applicant's repeat filing was, inter alia, by its own admission, that of not having to prove use of the contested mark, thus extending, with regard to the earlier marks, the five-year grace period." The decision to declare the mark invalid was upheld.

In Case T-44/20, the Court upheld a Board of Appeal ruling in a dispute between Chanel and Huawei, finding that Huawei's EUTM application for a figurative H/U shape was not similar to Chanel's Double-C trade mark. The Court ruled that the Board was right to find that the marks were visually different, saying: "the comparison between the signs can be carried out only on the basis of the shapes and orientations in which those signs are registered or applied for" and the marks should be compared in the form registered "irrespective of any possible rotation in their use on the market".

The Court annulled a Board of Appeal decision in a case concerning likelihood of confusion between an EUTM application for GRILLOUMI and the earlier EU collective word mark HALLOUMI (Case T-555/19). It held "contrary to what the Board of Appeal found, that the complementary connection between cheese and services for providing food and drink, restaurant services and coffee-shop services must lead to the finding that there is a certain degree of similarity between, on the one hand, the 'services for providing food and drink; coffee-shop services; restaurants' in Class 43 covered by the mark applied for and, on the other hand, the 'cheese' in Class 29 covered by the earlier mark." This meant that the possibility that the relevant public might be led to think that the goods and services at issue have the same commercial origin could not be excluded. The Board must now carry out a global assessment.

In an RCD case concerning beverage bottles, the Court agreed with the Board of Appeal that the designs pictured produced a different overall impression on the informed user. The judgment (Case T-326/20) addressed interesting issues, including the alleged "particularly broad" protection of the prior design, the informed user, the designer's degree of freedom and the overall impression produced by the designs.

Unsubscribe:
You can unsubscribe from this emailing list or change the frequency and type of information you receive from MARQUES at anytime by logging into the MARQUES website and clicking on the Preferences tab in the My Profile section of the My Account page.  Alternatively you can reply to this email with the subject 'NewsChannel - Unsubscribe' to be removed from this mailing list.