From the European Court of Justice today: Part 2
Here are the rest of today's Community trade mark decisions from Luxembourg ...Case T-190/05 Sherwin-Williams v OHIM (TWIST & POUR). This was an application to register the words TWIST & POUR for 'hand held plastic containers sold as an integral part of a liquid paint containing, storage and pouring device’ in Class 21 (an example of one such container is displayed, right). The examiner said no, it was non-distinctive under Article 7(1)(b) of Council Regulation 40/94 because it was of the function of the goods for which the mark was to be registered. The Board of Appeal agreed, considering that the fact that the examiner tied an objection based on lack of distinctiveness under Article 7(1)(b) to reasoning based on descriptiveness under Article 7(1)(c) was not fatal. The CFI, dismissing Sherwin-Williams' appeal, agreed since the public interest protected by bars to registration under Articles 7(1)(b) and 7(1)((c) was the same in each case.
Case T-339/05 MacLean-Fogg v OHIM (LOKTHREAD). The trade mark in respect of which registration was sought is the word sign LOKTHREAD, for 'bolts, bolts of metal, nuts, nuts of metal’ in Class 6. The examiner, Board of Appeal and CFI all agreed that this was a non-starter: the mark was both descriptive and non-distinctive. The unusual spelling of 'lock' as 'lok', the absence of a space between the two components of the word and the fact that the word did not unequivocally describe bolts, nuts etc were insufficient to save it, since there was no syntactically unusual juxtaposition.
Joined Cases T‑53/04 to T‑56/04, T‑58/04 and T‑59/04 Budějovický Budvar v OHIM - Anheuser-Busch (BUDWEISER); Joined Cases T‑57/04 and T‑71/04 Budějovický Budvar v OHIM - Anheuser-Busch (BUDWEISER); Joined Cases T‑60/04 to T‑64/04 Budějovický Budvar v OHIM - Anheuser-Busch (BUD). In each of these rulings the CFI dismissed an appeal against a refusal of the Board of Appeal to uphold an opposition based on what was alleged to be an earlier geographical appellation.As before, the IPKat reserves the right to comment on these cases once he's had long enough to think about them.
