As of January 14, 2023, actions for revocation and invalidity of Spanish trademarks can be filed through administrative proceedings before the Spanish Patent and Trademark Office (“SPTO”). This is expected to make cancelling a trademark, quicker, cheaper, and more flexible than through Court proceedings. This is likely to be most relevant for non-use cancellation actions…
The night setting on contentious administrative appeals in Spain On 14 January 2023, some rather fundamental changes are going to be implemented regarding trademark proceedings in Spain. These affect, firstly, trademark cancellation proceedings, and secondly, judicial appeals from rulings by the Spanish PTO. Spain is finally joining the rest of the EU Member States…
In a decision of 22 April 2016, the Spanish Supreme Court has clarified the circumstances in which the commercialization of original luxury products through Internet sale platforms outside a selective distribution system could be relied on by the trademark owner as precluding an exhaustion of the trademark rights. The plaintiffs, various companies of the L’Oréal…
The relevance of the graphic element in the comparison of figurative signs and the application of the “principle of continuity of registration”. In two different decisions, rendered within a fortnight of each other, the Spanish Supreme Court decided to accept the registration of the trademark “La Española” plus graphics but deny the registration of the…
The Spanish Supreme Court recently had to consider the likelihood of confusion between the representation of a lila mop registered as a two-dimensional trade mark and another party’s actual product, again, a lila mop. The signs at issue were the following: Trademarks owned by the plaintiff Defendant’s use The Court rejected the…
The CJEU in its decision of 4 February 2016 in the ARKTIS case (C-163/15) followed the opinion of Advocate General Wathelet and confirmed that recordal of a license is not a necessary condition for the licensee to be able to bring an infringement action based on a CTM. In our last post (here) we commented…
In his opinion of 17 December 2015 (Case C-163/15) concerning the trade mark ARKTIS, Advocate General Wathelet proposes that recordal of the license is not a necessary condition for the licensee to be able to bring an infringement action based on a CTM. According to Article 23(1) CTMR, the transfer, rights in rem and licenses…
According to the Spanish Supreme Court, three-dimensional marks consisting of the shape of the product or its packaging are not considered to be genuinely used when used in conjunction with a highly distinctive word mark. Kraft Foods Galletas, S.A. (now Mondelez España Galletas Productions, S.L.), subsidiary of Kraft Foods Global Brands LLC (now Intercontinental Great…
