Verena von Bomhard

 v.   By judgment of 30 April 2025, the General Court of the European Union upheld the decision of the First Board of Appeal of the EUIPO finding a likelihood of confusion between the two figurative…

  On 10 April 2025, Advocate General (AG) Cápeta delivered her opinion in the matter EUIPO v Nowhere, C-337/22 P, also referred to as APE TEES. The opinion is both surprising and concerning. If the…

  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…

Chiquita Brands queens it over Red Queen – General Court, 29 May 2024, T-79/23   The General Court (GC) has annulled another Board of Appeal decision. That in itself is worth reporting as this…

  On 13 March 2024, the General Court (3rd and 7th Chamber) issued two judgments dealing with weak marks in the sense the most trademark practitioners applaud, namely granting descriptive elements in…

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…

  Part 1 of this year’s retrospective provided a general overview over the GC case law from 2023 with numbers and a special focus on genuine use cases. Part 2 now focuses on weak marks. The reader is…

  The year is ending and so it is time, once again, to look at what has been coming out of the General Court (GC) over the past 12 months. While the numbers here are only approximate, resulting from…

   As expected, in its decision of 21 December 2022 (T-44/22), the General Court (GC) upheld the refusal of the packaging design shown above on the right as a trademark for tobacco products in class…