The Court of Justice of the European Union, the highest Court within the EU.
With its long-awaited BASMATI judgment of 20 June 2024, the CJEU dismissed EUIPO’s appeal. According to the CJEU, the GC was right to uphold Indo’s action. The cease of effect of the earlier right invoked in an opposition after the BoA decision the annulment of which is requested before the GC does not mean that…
Swatch sued Samsung for trademark infringement, arguing that Samsung allowed users to download infringing watch face apps from its Galaxy App Store (“SGA”). The Samsung case[1] shows that the UK courts will take a different view, however, where a tech provider plays an active role in providing an ecosystem for third-party developers. We have previously…
On 18 January 2024, in case C-367/21 (still no English version) the CJEU ruled again on the exhaustion of EU trade mark rights (following its five rulings of 17 November 2022 including C-175/21 Harman International Industries, C-224/20 Merck Sharp & Dohme, and C‑204/20 Bayer Intellectual Property). The Polish IP Court had referred questions to the…
Will the CJEU take a deep dive into the right of possession? The European Court of Justice will have to deal with this question following a reference from the German Federal Supreme Court (Decision of 23 January 2024 in Case I ZR 205/22). The detailed questions which the Court will have to answer are: …
We UK lawyers view with interest the developments in the “Brexit cases”, resulting in appeals to the CJEU in 3 cases, as discussed in various previous posts on this blog, the latest being the summary (here) of the AG opinion in the first case, BASMATI. The BASMATI case, and the related “Brexit cases” APE TEES…
On 25 January 2024 the CJEU issued the long-awaited judgement in the already famous AUDI case (C-334/22). This judgment confirms the possibility of Audi trade mark infringement in terms of the legal interpretation which will be further determined by a national court. The court ruled in AUDI’s favour, stating that a car manufacturer can prohibit…
On AG Szpunar’s Opinion in Case C-801/22 P BASMATI was the first of the appeals to the CJEU in the three „Brexit cases“. The other two are APE TEES (EUIPO v Nowhere, C-337/22 P) and SHOPPI (Shopify v EUIPO, C-751/22 P, see here and here)). The CJEU allowed all three appeals to proceed, and in…
To which extent can the General Court review decisions by the EUIPO Boards of Appeal (BoA) is an issue never properly addressed, and one that the CJEU has found to be “significant with respect to the unity, consistency or development of EU law”. Thus, with its order of July 11, 2023, it allowed an appeal…
Registrability of Works of Art as Trademarks Recently, the European Union Intellectual Property Office (“EUIPO”) and the Hungarian Intellectual Property Office (“HIPO”) have been asked in several cases to examine whether a work of art, in particular a painting, can be registered as a trademark. If a work of art is protected by copyright,…
Since the introduction on 2019 of the filtering mechanism according to which the CJEU has to decide whether or not allow an appeal to proceed in cases that have already been considered twice (such as by the EUIPO’s Board of Appeal and by the General Court), only few appeals have been considered treating issues that…
