• Press
  • Offices
  • Contact
  • Legal notice
  • EN
    • DE
  • UPC
  • Firm
    • Main Focus
    • History
    • Guiding Principle
    • Awards and Rankings
  • Our Practice
    • Legal Areas
    • Industries
  • Our Team
  • Career
    • Working with us
  • News & Knowledge
    • News
    • Events
    • UPC-Update
    • IP-Update
    • Brexit-Update
    • Publications
    • B&B Bulletin
  • Menu Menu
FIND EXPERTS
  • UPC
  • Firm
    • Main Focus
    • History
    • Guiding Principle
    • Awards and Rankings
  • News & Knowledge
    • News
    • Events
    • UPC-Update
    • IP-Update
    • Brexit-Update
    • Publications
    • B&B Bulletin
  • FIND EXPERTS
  • Contact
  • Our Practice
    • Legal Areas
    • Industries
  • Our Team
  • Career
    • Working with us
  • Offices
  • EN
    • DE

“General Court overrules previous instance: No likelihood of confusion between CODY’S and CODE-X for marks in beverages sector” – Article by Dr. Florian Schwab in WTR

15. March 2022/in Publications, Trade Marks

On the online portal of the trade journal World Trademark Review (WTR), BOEHMERT & BOEHMERT partner Dr. Florian Schwab discusses a recent trademark law decision of the General Court in (T-198/21) Ancor Group GmbH v. European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) of February 23, 2022. 

The court set aside the decision of the Board of Appeal of the EUIPO and – upholding the decision of the Opposition Division – finally rejected the opposition based on the word and figurative marks CODY’S against the word mark CODE-X (essentially each claiming beverages in class 42 of the Nice classification). 

In contrast to the Board of Appeal, the European judges found no likelihood of confusion between the marks. They based their decision primarily on the fact that CODY’S and CODE-X are visually and phonetically similar, at most, to an average degree. The hyphen creates a syllabic and visual break, which does not apply to the apostrophe. For goods in the beverage sector, it cannot be assumed that they are primarily ordered orally (for example in a busy and noisy bar where phonetic differences may not be clearly perceived) and, thus, the phonetic comparison is not per se primarily relevant. 

In Dr. Schwab’s opinion, the result reached by the court is convincing. It is worth noting that the overruling of the Board of Appeal is more the exception than the rule in EU trademark matters. 

The full article in English is available online for registered users of WTR here!

/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/boehmert_logo.svg 0 0 Petra Hettenkofer /wp-content/uploads/2022/04/boehmert_logo.svg Petra Hettenkofer2022-03-15 14:45:582022-07-27 15:44:17“General Court overrules previous instance: No likelihood of confusion between CODY’S and CODE-X for marks in beverages sector” – Article by Dr. Florian Schwab in WTR

Author

Dr. Florian Schwab, LL.M., Lic en droit

Contents

More articles

  • Publication of the Sedona Guidelines with co-author Dr.… 30. January 2023
  • Dr. Rudolf Böckenholt comments in GRUR-Prax judgment on the… 26. January 2023
  • Fabio Adinolfi discusses ECJ judgment in GRUR-Prax on the… 11. January 2023

Menu

  • Firm
  • Our Practice
  • Career
  • News & Knowledge
  • FIND EXPERTS

Informations

  • Press
  • Contact
  • Legal notice
  • Data Protection
  • General Terms and Conditions
  • Contact

Legal Areas

  • Employee Inventions
  • Data Protection
  • Designs
  • Domains
  • Information Technology
  • Anti-Trust
  • Licencing
  • Trade Marks
  • Patent Valuation
  • Patents & Utility Models
  • Patent Litigation
  • Product Piracy
  • Copyright
  • Unfair Competition

© Copyright 2023– BOEHMERT & BOEHMERT

Scroll to top

We only use functional cookies and no third party services. Learn more in our privacy policy.

Powered by  GDPR Cookie Compliance
Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.

Strictly Necessary Cookies

Strictly Necessary Cookie should be enabled at all times so that we can save your preferences for cookie settings.

If you disable this cookie, we will not be able to save your preferences. This means that every time you visit this website you will need to enable or disable cookies again.