SNEAKER 63: A lesson in bad faith
This case serves as a reminder that, if a trade mark is used by a company and is therefore…
In the recent decision of the EUIPO Board of Appeal in the cancellation case between Enovation Brands Inc (“the Proprietor”) and Advance Magazine Publishers Inc (“the Cancellation Applicant”), the Board was asked to decide whether a new defence/evidence could be raised at the appeal stage if it could serve to shed light on matters arising earlier in the proceedings.
Having lost at first instance, Enovation Brands Inc sought to appeal a decision which invalidated its EU Trade Mark registration for VOGA (“contested mark”), registered in 2006 covering:
The invalidity action was brought by Advance Magazine Publishers Inc on the basis of Article 8(1) and the similarity of the contested mark to their earlier EU Trade Mark registration for VOGUE, filed in 2004 and registered in 2015 covering:
In a decision of 18 February 2019 (“the contested decision”), the Cancellation Division found that there was a likelihood of confusion on the basis of the similarity of the goods and services in question (to a low degree), the visual similarity of the marks (to an average degree), the phonetic similarity of the marks (to a high degree) and the average degree of inherent distinctiveness of the earlier mark.
On 28 February 2019, Enovation Brands filed an appeal requesting the Board to reject the contested decision in its entirety and order the Applicant to bear the costs of the proceedings. In its grounds of appeal, the Proprietor invoked Acquiescence (Article 61 EUTMR) as a defence along with supporting evidence showing use of its trade mark, which included advertisements for VOGA in various magazines, email correspondence, invoices, a decision of the Latvian Intellectual Property Office and a licence agreement.
The Proprietor argued that:
In response, the Cancellation Applicant argued that:
After considering both parties’ arguments, the Board found the appeal to be admissible but not well founded and that Article 61 EUTMR did not apply.
As the appeal did not expressly contest the substance of the decision, namely the application of Article 8 (1) by the Cancellation Division or the similarity of the trade marks in question, the Board did not re-examine the point, but instead turned to the issue of Acquiescence.
The Board reiterated that in accordance to case law, namely Netto/Netto Supermercados, the examination of the appeal shall be limited to the grounds set out in the statement of grounds. The Board could go beyond this and consider legal grounds not raised by the parties only if they concern fundamental procedural requirements or if their examination is necessary to ensure the correct application of the EUTMR with regards to the facts, evidence and arguments filed by the parties.
In any event, the Board found that Article 61 would not have applied in this case even if raised earlier in the proceedings because the ‘period of limitation in consequence of acquiescence starts running after the registration date of the earlier EUTM’ which in this case was 16 June 2015, meaning that at the time of the cancellation application the registration relied upon by the Cancellation Applicant was not yet 5 years old.
Although the appeal decision did not strictly turn on this point, this case serves as a reminder of the importance of setting out your case at the EUIPO as fully as possible to cover all the possible grounds you might be entitled to rely on as they cannot be easily introduced later down the line, if at all.
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