Upon
request of Chiquita, Jara provided sufficient evidence of use of its
trade mark for ‘fresh fruit’ and the Opposition Division of the European
Union Intellectual Property Office (‘EUIPO’) upheld the opposition. The
Board of Appeal of the EUIPO (‘BoA’) dismissed Chiquita’s appeal.
Chiquita brought an action before the General Court.
The General Court’s decision The General Court upheld the appeal and annulled the BoA’s decision.
The
judges confirmed the BoA’s findings that the relevant public consists
of the average consumer in the EU, whose level of attention is, at most,
average and that the assessment of the likelihood of confusion may be
limited to the Spanish public.
Distinctive and dominant elements of the signs The General Court disagreed with the BoA’s assessment of the distinctive and dominant elements of the signs at issue.
1.
With respect to the earlier mark, the BoA was correct to hold that the
words ‘fincas’, ‘jara 2000’ and ‘tabirana’ in the red circle were so
small that they could be regarded as “secondary, or even negligible”.
2.
Concerning the contested application, the word ‘CHIQUITA’ was found to
be inherently weakly distinctive for some fruits because the term could
be used to refer to something tiny or small in Spanish.
Unlike
the BoA, the judges took into account that ‘CHIQUITA’ enjoys a
reputation for fresh fruits in Spain. Therefore, the Court found the
term not to have a weak distinctive character in the contested
application.
The EUIPO argued that the case law does not allow
taking the reputation of the contested application into account. In
their response, the judges distinguished between
- The
distinctiveness of the earlier mark as a whole (although the EUIPO’s
argument concerned the distinctiveness of the contested mark as a
whole), which is relevant to the overall assessment of the likelihood of
confusion only, and
- The
determination of the distinctive elements of the signs, which must be
done for the assessment of the similarity of the signs.
Without providing any further arguments, the General Court concluded that the reputation of the element ‘CHIQUITA’ is relevant.
3.
The Court also disagreed with the BoA on the distinctiveness of the
word ‘queen’. The BoA did not consider it to be used as widely as ‘king’
in order to describe characteristics of goods or to convey a laudatory
connotation. The judges found that, like the words ‘king’ and ‘royal’,
the term ‘queen’ carries a laudatory connotation praising the quality of
the goods in question. These words are part of the basic English
vocabulary and will (even) be understood by the Spanish public.
As
a consequence, the word ‘CHIQUITA’ was found to have a higher degree of
distinctiveness in the contested application than the word “QUEEN”.
Similarity of the signs On
that basis, the General Court held that the visual similarity of the
signs is weak at most because of the differences in length and the word
‘CHIQUITA’, which is more distinctive than the common word ‘QUEEN’ and
also placed in the beginning. The figurative elements of the earlier
mark reinforce the differences between the signs.
The phonetic
similarity was considered to be low on account of the different
pronunciation of ‘CHIQUITA’ and ‘Red’ in the beginning of the signs.
Conceptually,
the Court considered the low distinctive character of the common word
‘QUEEN’ and found a low degree of similarity at most.
Eventually,
the judges denied a likelihood of confusion despite identical goods.
They found the differences between the signs to be sufficiently
pronounced so that the public would not believe that the goods come from
the same or economically linked undertakings.
Comment A couple of thoughts on this decision:
1.
It is good to see that the Spanish public is considered to understand
at least a little bit of English. Consumers in Spain are often the ‘wild
card’ in opposition and invalidity proceedings dealing with trade marks
containing English words because a significant part of the Spanish
public is (or was?) considered to have low proficiency in English (e.g.
case
T-356/14 at para. 54).
2.
The General Court’s finding that the reputation of ‘CHIQUITA’ in Spain
must be taken into account would have deserved some (more detailed)
explanations. As the EUIPO rightly argued and the Court did not comment
on, the case law indicates that the reputation of the contested mark has
no impact on the assessment of the likelihood of confusion (e.g. case
T‑352/20 at para. 23). If that premise is true, then why should the reputation of a part of a sign be taken into account?
But
the premise is debatable. Why should the reputation of the (entire)
contested mark not be considered? The EU courts have not provided any
convincing reason for their position. Further, the case law seems
inconsistent because it makes an exception for the reputation of an
individual’s name since the
Barbara Becker
decision of the Court of Justice of the EU (‘CJEU’, at para. 37). The
CJEU argued that the well-known status of the person’s name for which
trade mark protection is sought “may obviously influence the perception
of the mark by the relevant public”. Why does this only apply to names
of individuals but not to reputed trade marks? Does the reputation of a
name – regardless of whether that of a person, a company or a
good/service – not shape the perception of that name?
3. It
would have been interesting to see the General Court discuss an
independent distinctive role of the word ‘QUEEN’ in the contested
application. ‘CHIQUITA’ is obviously a well-known trade mark and trade
name. Therefore, the term ‘QUEEN’ may enjoy an independent distinctive
position in the later mark. However, there are several questions on
which there is no CJEU case law (yet), in particular whether such a
position can exist even though not the entire earlier mark has been
included in the later mark and whether a weakly distinctive element can
take an independent position.