Rintisch v Eder – WLR Daily

Posted October 26th, 2012 in EC law, food, law reports, trade marks by tracey

Rintisch v Eder: C-553/11;   [2012] WLR (D)  289

“Article 10(2)(a) of First Council Directive 89/104/EEC of 21 December 1988 to approximate the laws of the member states relating to trade marks meant that the proprietor of a registered trade mark was not precluded from relying, in order to establish use of the trade mark for the purposes of that provision, on the fact that it was used in a form which differed from the form in which it was registered, without the differences between the two forms altering the distinctive character of that trade mark, even though that different form was itself registered as a trade mark. The article precluded an interpretation of a national provision intended to transpose it into domestic law whereby article 10(2)(a) did not apply to a ‘defensive’ trade mark which was registered only in order to secure or expand the protection of another registered trade mark that is registered in the form in which it was used.”

WLR Daily, 25th October 2012

Source: www.iclr.co.uk