Appeal brought on 4 August 2016 by Wolf Oil Corp. against the judgment of the General Court (Single Judge) delivered on 1 June 2016 in Case T-34/15: Wolf Oil Corp. v European Union Intellectual Property Office

(Case C-437/16 P)

(2016/C 428/05)

Language of the case: English

Parties

Appellant: Wolf Oil Corp. (represented by: P. Maeyaert, J. Muyldermans, advocaten)

Other party to the proceedings: European Union Intellectual Property Office

Form of order sought

The appellant claims that the Court should:

Pleas in law and main arguments

By its appeal, the appellant (Wolf Oil), asks the Court of Justice to set aside the judgment of the General Court of 1 June 2016 in case T-34/15 (‘judgment under appeal’), in which the General Court rejected the action brought by Wolf Oil against the decision of Fifth Board of Appeal of the European Union Intellectual Property Office (‘EUIPO’) of 31 October 2014 (Case R 1596/2013-5). The appeal is based on two pleas in law.

By its first plea, Wolf Oil challenges the judgement under appeal for a lack of proper motivation and distortion of evidence, to the extent that it failed to provide any response to a number of arguments and inconsistencies raised by Wolf Oil in support of the plea that the EUIPO had incorrectly applied the likelihood of confusion (Article 8.1.b) of Regulation (EC) on the European Union Trademark Regulation (1) (as recently amended by Regulation 2015/2424 (2)) (‘EUTMR’).

By its second plea, Wolf alleges that the judgment under appeal has violated Article 8.1.b) EUTMR, by having wrongly applied the principles of a likelihood of confusion. The plea is divided into three parts. The first two parts of the second plea allege an incorrect interpretation of the rule, well-established in the case-law of the General Court and the Court of Justice, that conceptual differences between two trademarks may, to some extent, counteract the visual and phonetic similarities between them. The third part of the second plea challenges the judgement under appeal to the extent that, in the global assessment of the likelihood of confusion, it failed to account of the actual use of the trademarks made on the market.

(1)  Council Regulation (EC) No 207/2009 of 26 February 2009 on the Community trade mark OJ L 78, p. 1

(2)  Regulation (EU) 2015/2424 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 16 December 2015 amending Council Regulation (EC) No 207/2009 on the Community trade mark and Commission Regulation (EC) No 2868/95 implementing Council Regulation (EC) No 40/94 on the Community trade mark, and repealing Commission Regulation (EC) No 2869/95 on the fees payable to the Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market (Trade Marks and Designs) OJ L 341, p. 21