Dood van de aanvrager van een merk

Gerecht EU 8 maart 2012, zaak T/298-10 (Arrieta D. Gross tegen OHMI/Toro Araneda) - dossier

Gemeenschapsmerkenrecht. Dood van de merkaanvrager. In de oppositieprocedure komt aanvrager van het beeldmerk BIODANZA houdster van het ouder Duits woordmerk BIODANZA tegen. De oppositieafdeling wijst de oppositie toe voor ee ndeel van de waren/diensten. De Kamer van Beroep wijst het beroep toe en wijst de oppositie in haar geheel af. De aangevoerde middelen: 1. er is ten onrechte geoordeeld dat er geen sprake van normaal gebruik van het ouder merk. 2. schending van regel 22 lid 2 Verordening 2868/95 omdat de kamer verzoekster niet heeft verzocht bewijsstukken te overleggen zoals volgens de aanwijzingen vereist was.

In citaten:

Dood van de aanvrager 38 In the light of all the above considerations, it must be concluded that a deceased person cannot be the proprietor of an application for registration of a Community trade mark. Furthermore, there is no provision in Regulation No 207/2009 that the death of the applicant for registration of a Community trade mark entails the expiry of that application. Such a conclusion would be contrary to the nature of the application for registration as an object of property and to the considerations set out in the previous paragraph.

Bewijs van gebruik, niet middels advertentie 64 In particular, the applicant lists in her application seven advertisements published in the German magazines Körper Geist und Seele Hamburg, Connection-Gesund Leben, Lebenswege Magazin, Frankfurter Ring and Die Kunst zu Leben. The Board of Appeal allegedly ignored these advertisements and referred exclusively, and incorrectly, to advertising documents distributed by the applicant herself, such as flyers and leaflets, for which there was no proof that they had actually been distributed to the relevant public.

Geen ontkenning van bewijs, maar geen bewijs van verspreiding 66 Contrary to what the applicant claims, therefore, the Board of Appeal did not ignore the existence of that type of advertising in the evidence of genuine use of the earlier trade mark. However, it follows from the contested decision that, in essence, the Board of Appeal considered that the production of copies of advertising that had appeared in magazines was not, in itself, sufficient to prove that that advertising had received significant distribution to the intended consumers.