On Tuesday 24 September (judgment in Case T-219/18), the General Court of the European Union dismissed the action brought by the Italian company Piaggio & Co against the 2010 decision of the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) to register as a Community design a scooter produced by the Chinese company Zhejiang Zhongneng Industry Group.
Piaggio had applied for the cancellation of that registration, alleging that the Chinese design was void of novelty in relation to the one of its famous model Vespa LX and thus infringed its intellectual property rights on its protected design in Italy as an unregistered three-dimensional trademark and in France and Italy as a copyrighted intellectual work.
However, its request had been rejected twice by EUIPO, in 2015 and 2018.
By its judgment, the General Court confirmed EUIPO's analysis excluding the infringement of Piaggio's copyright and maintained the registration of the Zhejiang model. In particular, it judges that the EUIPO has correctly concluded that the Zhejiang scooter and the Vespa LX scooter produce different overall impressions, the former being dominated by angular lines, while the latter favours rounded lines. According to the judges, there is therefore no likelihood of confusion on the part of the relevant public as to the singularity of the two models and the Chinese scooter does indeed have a new and individual character justifying its registration as a Community design.
Piaggio's appeal is therefore dismissed and the registration of the design submitted by Zhejiang is maintained. (Original version in French by Francesco Gariazzo)