Luxembourg, 06/02/2001 (Agence Europe) - Last week, the Court of First Instance (CFI) ruled on several cases pertaining to:
- Trademarks. Wrigley, Taurus Film and Sunrider gain varying degrees of satisfaction in their action initiated against the Trademark Office, unlike Mitsubishi paper Hitec, which gains nothing.
The Californian company, Sunrider, retains the hope of using its verbal mark "Vitalite" in the EU for baby food and mineral waters, which has been refused to date by the European Trademark Office. The Court of First Instance, however, was right in prohibiting it from using the name "Vitalite" for pharmaceutical products, herbal tea or dietary additives. "Vitalite" is too explicit in giving the purpose of the product in the case of a medicine, for example. This is prohibited by the European regulation of 1994 on European trademarks, said the Second Chamber presided by Jörg Pirrung.
On the other hand, states the CFI, "Vitalite" does not exceed the legal area of suggestion for baby food or the suggestion of a promotional image for mineral waters. Sunrider had unsuccessfully tried to prove that, pronounced without an accent on the final "e", "Vitalite" is not seen by a French-speaking consumer as the same thing as "vitalité". The Office should reconsider its decision concerning baby food and mineral water. It should be noted that the CFI, like the Alicante Office, had rejected the argument based on the fact that "Vitalite" had been registered in the Benelux countries, Switzerland and Monaco. (At the time, the rules were different in the Benelux, and Switzerland and Monaco are third countries). Sunrider was defended by Maître Kockläuner, a Munich lawyer.
It was also but half a victory for the German company, Taurus Film, and its lawyer from Bremen, Maître Schneider, who challenged the categorical refusal by the Alicante Office to register its marks, cine comedy and cine action, as Community trademarks. In German, the terms cine comedy and cine action too clearly designate a specific category of film. On the other hand, states the CFI, Taurus Film could use this name for a whole series of products such as television programmes or for its shows because the names are less descriptive in these cases.
Success was more obvious for the American company, Wrigley, which won the cancellation of the refusal by the Alicante Office to register its trade name, Doublemint. For the trademark Office, Doublemint was purely descriptive without the addition of any fantasy or imaginative element, and could therefore not be registered as a Community trademark. The Second Chamber felt the Office was wrong to consider this name as purely descriptive as it can also mean "twice as much mint as usual" or "having the taste of two sorts of mint". Furthermore, "mint" may mean green mint, peppermint, or other herbs used in cooking. The court concludes that Doublemint is not purely descriptive because of the large number of semantic combinations possible.
The German firm Mitsubishi Hitec Paper Bielefeld, on the other hand, will not be able to register the tradename giroform that it wanted to use for the marketing of printed forms. The Fourth Chamber of the Court of First Instance, presided by Finnish Judge Virpi Tiili, has confirmed the refusal by the Alicante Office: giroform too clearly describes a kind of payment transaction to be registered. The fact that this mark has been deposited by many countries in the world, as stressed by Maître Ulrich, lawyer from Düsseldorf, will therefore not have an impact on application of the rules governing the registering of Community marks.
In all, since the Trademark Office was created, fifteen cases have been judged by the Court of First Instance. About forty are still before the Court. Observers have remarked that this is far from the 400 cases that were to come before the CFI in 1997 and which helped to justify the setting in place of a rapid procedure in the form of a Chamber with one judge for so-called "easy" cases. Sources close to the Court of First Instance maintain that, sooner or later, this volume of cases will be reached.
- Improvements to slaughterhouses in the Netherlands.
Weyl Beef Products, presented as the largest slaughteryard in the Netherlands, and two slaughterhouses of average size currently under compulsory liquidation, Chris Hogeslag and Groninger Vleeshandel, have lost their case against the European Commission. They wanted the latter to conduct an investigation into the complaint filed against the Dutch bodies operating in national policy for the sector, in over-capacity. In order to set up this policy based on purchase and closure of slaughteryards, the bodies concerned consulted with each other illegally thus breaching competition rules, they state.
The Fourth Chamber considers that the Commission was justified in not opening an inquiry since the anti-competitive effects were only the consequence of State aid which had been approved.
Weyl Beef was defended by Mrs Pinacker Hordijk for the Amsterdam Bar and Noe from the Rotterdam Bar, the company Chris Hogeslag by Mr de Bruyn from the Zutphen Bar and Groninger Vleeshandel by the partners in Leeuwarden Mr Mazel.
The second chamber rejected as not receivable the case by Autosalone Ispra dei Fratelli Rossi Snc introduced in 1999, aimed at obtaining more than one billion Italian Lira from the Joint Research Centre (JRC) in Ispra. A grate placed over the outflow of the waste water collector in the city, below the city centre had obstructed the waste and provoked a flood after a violent storm in 1992.
The Court feels that from this time, the company had sufficient elements to engage the extra-contractual responsibility of the European Commission. Autosalone Ispra thus had until 1997 to being a case under this reasoning. The company did not have to wait to have all the elements proving the Centre's responsibility to act in court (the period of limitation to engage the responsibility of the Commission is five years), explains the Court. The chamber does not support the argument of its lawyer, Mr Venuti, from the Busto Arsizio Bar, according to which the period of limitation had been suspended for three years.
The banana importer T Port represented by Mr Meier did not succeed to have the European Commission condemned in reparation for a prejudice it felt of close to one billion DM. This amount corresponds to the price of the export certificates it bought to export bananas from Costa Rica. The fourth chamber of the Court Presided over by Rafael Garcia-Valdecasas rejected the case of the importer: "if it must be presumed - which appears to be the case in this matter - that the company concluded its contracts after the adoption of the said regulation (from 1995 concerning banana imports: Ed.), it would have had to outline the motives for which it was only able to use producers in Costa Rica.
Rendert Jansma is alone among the four Dutch milk producers to have gain redress before the forth chamber Presided over by Virpi Tiili. It was able to prove that, forced to sell two farms that where no longer profitable because the Commission refused it a milk quota, it nevertheless kept all its equipment and milking machines in the hope of a favourable decision from the EU. The producer wanted NGL 3 million in compensation; the Commission has six months to reach an understanding with it.
Slom is the Dutch acronym designating this category of milk producers and then adopted by Community jargon. For more than fifteen years, they have been thousands to plead the fact that they no longer had the right to obtain milk quotas in the 1980s because the had received a non-commercialisation premium at the end of the 1970s. With recent success, following a ruling by the Court in their favour, the Community budget of 1997 had already paid them some EUR 150 million in compensation.
On the other hand, the producers Bernard Beusmans, Gerharus van den Berg and Edouard Bouma were unable to bring the proof after the non-commercialisation premium, they wanted to restart production. They will not be compensated. The four producers were defended by Mr Pijnacker Hordijk and Mr Bronkhorst from the Amsterdam Bar. Several dozen, or even just under a hundred Slom cases are still pending.