Adidas loses part of the rights of its brand
A ruling by the General Court of the European Union (EU) indicated that the trademark had not shown that its three bands had distinctive characteristics such as the same width and the same distance between themselves
The German manufacturer of sporting goods Adidas lost a part of its trademark rights of the three strips, according to a ruling pronounced by the General Court of the European Union (EU).
The decision on Wednesday is limited to a special model, according to the German company. The broader trademark rights in the EU remained intact in their different forms for the three strips.
The Luxembourg judges argued that the company had not demonstrated that the mark consisting of three parallel stripes of equal width and the same distance in any direction would have acquired sufficient distinctive character with respect to consumers throughout the EU.
The background of the case was a decision of the Intellectual Property Office of the European Union (EUIPO) in Alicante, Spain, following the demand of a competing company. The question to be resolved was whether consumers automatically linked this form of the three strips with Adidas.
The company had initially secured this badge for clothing, shoes and hats. But later the sporting goods company filed a lawsuit in Luxembourg. The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) is still open in the space of about two months in theory.
Many of the evidences presented by Adidas were invalid, since they presented, for example, models of inverted colors, such as white stripes on a black background, instead of black stripes on a white background, the Luxembourg judges also explained. Therefore, the only evidence of certain relevance referred only to five EU nations and could not be extrapolated to the bloc, they concluded.
“We are disappointed,” said a spokeswoman for Adidas. With this ruling, it was confirmed that, in Europe, the protection under trademark law can not be guaranteed for all the positions and addresses of the brand of the three strips in the Adidas products, he assessed.
K. Tovar
Source: ElCEO
