Katja Kovačič, a lawyer at ITEM, published in World Trademark Review (WTR) an article concerning an interesting case resulting in the General Court’s judgment in Case T-510/22, October 4 2023.
This ‘one of a kind’ case involved revocation proceedings against a trademark which had mistakenly been registered as a collective mark. When the trademark changed its owner, EUIPO corrected the nature of the trademark from ‘collective’ to ‘individual’. EUIPO revoked the trademark on the ground of non-use and the Board of Appeal upheld the decision. However, the Board found that the trademark was still a collective mark, and that the correction remained without effect.
The owner filed an action with the General Court, asserting that the contested trademark should not have been revoked because i) sufficient evidence of genuine use had been submitted; and ii) the revocation decision was based on an erroneous interpretation of the EU trademark legislation, because holders of EU trademarks are not required to provide any specific type of evidence of use of EU trademarks challenged in revocation proceedings.
The General Court dismissed the action, finding that the Board of Appeal had correctly found that there was a lack of proof of genuine use of the mark. Furthermore, the Court remarked that the Board’s decision was not based on the ground that specific evidence was not submitted by the applicant, but on the ground that the evidence which it provided was not such as to establish that the mark was put to genuine use in respect of the goods for which it had been registered.
For the full article, please see the link below.
Katja Kovačič – General Court rebuffs argument alleging error of interpretation of EU legal texts in revocation proceedings, WTR, 2023
This article first appeared in WTR Daily, part of World Trademark Review, in October 2023. For further information, please go to www.worldtrademarkreview.com.