Keywords
Summary

Keywords

1. Community trade mark – Definition and acquisition of the Community trade mark – Relative grounds for refusal – Opposition by the proprietor of an earlier identical or similar mark registered for identical or similar goods or services – Likelihood of confusion

(Council Regulation No 40/94, Art. 8(1)(b))

2. Community trade mark – Definition and acquisition of the Community trade mark – Relative grounds for refusal – Opposition by the proprietor of an earlier identical or similar mark registered for identical or similar goods or services – Likelihood of confusion with the earlier mark

(Council Regulation No 40/94, Art. 8(1)(b))

3. Community trade mark – Definition and acquisition of the Community trade mark – Relative grounds for refusal – Opposition by the proprietor of an earlier identical or similar mark registered for identical or similar goods or services – Similarity between the goods or services in question

(Council Regulation No 40/94, Art. 8(1)(b))

Summary

1. The risk that the relevant public might believe that the goods or services covered by the two marks at issue come from the same undertaking or from economically-linked undertakings constitutes a likelihood of confusion within the meaning of Article 8(1)(b) of Regulation No 40/94 on the Community trade mark. The precise commercial origin that the relevant public will attribute to the goods or services covered by each of the two marks at issue is therefore of little importance so far as a likelihood of confusion between them is concerned. What is important is whether that commercial origin could be perceived by the relevant public as being the same in both cases.

(see paras 25-26)

2. A likelihood of confusion, within the meaning of Article 8(1)(b) of Regulation No 40/94 on the Community trade mark, exists for the relevant public, comprising both the general public and the specialised public of the European Union, between the word sign RIOJAVINA, registration of which as a Community trade mark is sought in respect of vinegars in Class 30 of the Nice Agreement and for ‘[s]ole agencies, representation services, wholesaling, retailing, export, import; all the aforesaid relating to vinegars’ in Class 35, and the figurative mark RIOJA registered earlier as a Community collective mark for wines in Class 33 of that agreement.

The low degree of similarity between the goods and services concerned is offset by the high degree of similarity between the marks at issue, so that the relevant public is likely to believe that the vinegar and the services for marketing the vinegar offered under the RIOJAVINA mark have the same commercial origin as the wines marketed under the earlier Community mark.

(see paras 33, 55)

3. In view of the close link between any product and its marketing, the Office of Harmonisation in the Internal Market (Trade Marks and Designs) was right, having established the existence of a similarity between the goods covered by the marks at issue, to conclude also that there is the same degree of similarity between, on the one hand, the marketing services expressly described as relating to the goods covered by the mark applied for and, on the other hand, the goods covered by the mark cited in opposition.

(see para. 43)