©-LAW

Earlier today, the General Court (GC) issued a  keenly-awaited ruling  (T‑307/17), in which it upheld the earlier decision of the EUIPO Second Board of Appeal (R 1515/2016-2), and found this three-stripe EU trade mark (EUTM) owned by adidas: invalid. In a nutshell, the GC found that: The trade mark at issue would not be a pattern mark, but an ordinary figurative mark;  The forms of use, eg colour scheme, of said trade mark should not to be taken into account; and  adidas failed to prove acquired distinctiveness throughout the EU. Let's see more in detail how the court reasoned. Background In 2014. adidas obtained an EUTM for the sign represented above, described as consisting of "three parallel equidistant stripes of identical width, applied on the product in any direction" for goods in Class 25 of the Nice Agreement. Also that year, Shoe Branding Europe filed an application for a declaration of invalidity of the EUTM pursu...

Every woman's dream red soles Can a colour be considered akin to a shape, so that a sign that consists exclusively of a colour "which gives substantial value to the goods" cannot be registered as a trade mark? As readers might notice, this question should be phrased differently under the new  Trade Mark Directive : Article 4(1)(e) therein prevents in fact registration as a trade mark of any sign that consists exclusively of "the shape, or another characteristic, which gives substantial value to the goods". However the question of whether a colour is to be regarded as a shape (and not just "another characteristic") is because under the 2008 Directive, Article 3(1)(e)(iii) therein prevents  [the general deadline for national implementations of the new directive is 14 January 2019]  registration of any sign which consists exclusively of "the shape which gives substantial value to the goods".  To add further complexity to this i...