21/11/2014 (Agence Europe) - Court of Justice rejects Intra-Presse appeal and cancels various rulings. The European Court of Justice is highly critical of the way the EU trademark BALLON D'OR (owned by the company Intra-Presse) has been dealt with, along with the request to register trademark GOLDEN BALLS (owned by the company Golden Balls). On Thursday 20 November, the Court of Justice rejected appeals (cases C-581/13 P and C-582/13 P) by Intra-Presse to ban the registration of GOLDEN BALLS for identical or similar products. The Court of Justice also annulled European General Court rulings on the grounds of errors of law (failing to take account of a weak conceptual similarity between the two verbal logos and potential confusion among different products) and annulled decisions taken by the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market, which failed to verify whether the BALLON D'OR trademark was recognised in the EU. (JK)