A tax on Sin? Posers for the Court of Justice

The IPKat's friends at the UK Intellectual Property Office (IPO) inform him that they have now received notification of a new case to the Court of Justice of the European Union for a preliminary ruling: it's Case C-583/12 Sintax Trading. According to the IPO,

"The case is a request for a preliminary ruling from the from the Estonian Supreme Court which concerns an alleged infringement of intellectual property rights and which body is competent to determine this when goods are detained on this basis on arrival in the EU. It arises from a challenge brought by Sintax Trading against a decision of the Estonian Tax and Customs Office to detain their goods imported from the Ukraine on the basis that they infringed a similar bottle design already registered in Estonia".

This Kat duly clicked the link which, the IPO promised, led to the case itself and the questions referred forf a preliminary ruling, but he thinks he got there before they uploaded it since it wasn't there. Though the underlying litigation seems to be a design case, there's no note of it on the Class 99 blog either.  Fortunately the Kat's friend at EU Law Radar has lots of useful information, which you can enjoy here.

If you have any useful advice for the IPO concerning this reference, do email policy@ipo.gsi.gov.uk by 19 February.