On Tuesday 5 December the General Court of the European Union (T-893/16) confirmed the rejection by the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) of the request made by the Chinese company, Xiaomi (electronics and mobile telephony) to register as an EU trademark, the verbal 'MI PAD' sign. This follows particular opposition of the US electronics and information technology giant, Apple.
Similarly to EUIPO in 2016, the Court now considers that the differences between the 'MI PAD' sign and the Apple registered IPAD were insufficient to exclude the existence of a risk of confusion within the public.
The judges argued that: at a visual level, the two signs are only different in a sequence of letters by the presence of the M at the beginning of 'MI PAD'; - at a phonetic level, the English-speaking public could perceive the 'MI' prefix as the possessive signifier of the word 'PAD' by 'IPAD', although the similarity of pronunciation for that two signs is just as high for the non-English-speaking public; - at a conceptual level, the English word 'pad' is included in two signs and the prefixes 'mi' and 'i' could be perceived by an English-speaking public as prefixes describing a common element and not changing it by any conceptual significance.
On this basis and, given the similarity or identity of the products and services covered by the two signs (pads and derived products and services), the Court concluded the existence of a risk of confusion within the public’s perception.
The General Court also considers that the degree of visual and phonetic similarity between the two signs could suggest that with regard to the latter, the products and services that they designate come from the same company or companies that are linked economically.
For these reasons, the refusal by EUIPO to grant Xiaomi’s request, were, according to the judges, justified. (Original version in French by Francesco Gariazzo)