Cyprus Mail 20 January 2021 - by Jean Christou
The EU’s General Court on Wednesday ruled that there was no likelihood of confusion between the collective mark ‘halloumi’ reserved for the members of a Cypriot association, and ‘BBQloumi’ which serves to designate the products of a Bulgarian company.
In March this year, the European Court of Justice has overturned a ruling that the Bulgarian cheese called BBQloumi could be registered with an EU trademark after an appeal filed by the Halloumi Foundation in Cyprus.
The Foundation for the Protection of the Traditional Cheese of Cyprus named halloumi is the proprietor of the EU collective mark ‘HALLOUMI’, registered for cheese.
An EU collective mark is a specific type of EU trademark, capable of distinguishing the goods or services of the members of the association which is the proprietor of the mark from those of other undertakings.
Relying on that collective mark, its proprietor brought opposition proceedings against the registration as an EU trademark of the figurative sign comprising the word element ‘BBQLOUMI’, which M. J. Dairies EOOD, a Bulgarian company, had applied for in relation to, inter alia, cheese, meat extracts, cheese-flavoured food products and catering services:
The European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO), responsible for the examination of applications for registration of EU trademarks, dismissed that opposition on the ground, in particular, that there was no likelihood of confusion, for consumers, between the figurative sign ‘BBQloumi’ and the earlier collective mark HALLOUMI.
The association then brought proceedings against that EUIPO decision before the General Court, which, after having found that the mark HALLOUMI had weak distinctiveness because the term ‘halloumi’ designates a specific type of cheese, also held that there was no likelihood of confusion. In its judgment of March 5, 2020, the Court of Justice, hearing an appeal against the General Court’s judgment, observed that the General Court had relied on the premiss that, in the case of an earlier mark with weak distinctiveness, the existence of a likelihood of confusion had to be ruled out as soon as it is established that the similarity of the marks at issue, in itself, does not permit such a likelihood to be established.
It ruled that such a premis is incorrect since the fact that the distinctiveness of an earlier mark is weak does not preclude the existence of a likelihood of confusion. Accordingly, it set aside that judgment and referred the case back to the General Court for it to examine whether there was a likelihood of confusion for consumers as regards the origin of the goods covered by the sign ‘BBQloumi’.
According to the ruling, the General Court dismissed the Cypriot association’s action by holding that EUIPO was correct in finding that there was no likelihood of confusion between the signs at issue.
“Concerning the similarity of the signs in question, the General Court states that the signs at issue share the element ‘loumi’ which has weak inherent distinctiveness for a large part of the relevant public who will understand it as a possible reference to halloumi cheese,” the ruling said.
“Given that the attention of the relevant public will be drawn more to the initial part of that word element, namely the part ‘bbq’, owing to its position, rather than to the final part ‘loumi’, that latter part contributes very little to the distinctiveness of the mark applied for. Thus, the low degree of similarity of the signs in question is unlikely to contribute to the existence of a likelihood of confusion”.
