6.10.2014

Official Journal of the European Union

C 351/6

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(Case C-374/14 P)

2014/C 351/08

Language of the case: German

Parties

Appellant: Walcher Meßtechnik GmbH (represented by: S. Walter, Rechtsanwalt)

Other party to the proceedings: Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market (Trade Marks and Designs) (OHIM)

Form of order sought

The appellant claims that the Court should:

—set aside the judgment of the Sixth Chamber of the General Court of the European Union of 22 May 2014 in Case T-95/13 and annul the contested decision of the First Board of Appeal of OHIM of 13 December 2012 in Case R 1779/2012-1;

—in the alternative, set aside the judgment of the Sixth Chamber of the General Court of 22 May 2014 in Case T-95/13 and refer the case back to the General Court;

—order OHIM to pay the costs.

Pleas in law and main arguments

The appellant puts forward two grounds of appeal, the first of which is divided into three parts:

First ground of appeal

The judgment under appeal infringes Article 7(1)(c) of Regulation No 207/2009 (1) for three reasons:

—When assessing whether a sign is registrable, account should be taken of the wording of the goods and/or services applied for. That did not happen in the proceedings before the General Court. Instead, the General Court took account of websites belonging to the appellant and the list of goods covered by a US trade mark, which were not the subject of the dispute.

—Even with the meaning assigned by the General Court to the word HIPERDRIVE, only one characteristic of a drive is described by the sign HIPERDRIVE. However, in the present case, no essential characteristics of the applied-for goods themselves were described by the alleged description of the part of the drive integrated into the goods applied for. The General Court therefore erred in law in the application of the criteria set out in the recent European case-law in that regard (see judgment of 15 January 2013 in Case T-625/11 BSH v OHIM (ecoDoor) (2) and judgment of 10 July 2014 in Case C-126/13 P BSH v OHIM (3), paragraph 27).

—The General Court’s allegedly incorrect assumption that ‘HIPER’ must be equated with ‘hyper’, although those terms are never used interchangeably, is based on the inaccurate assertion that both ‘HIPER’ and ‘hyper’ are pronounced identically in English. Despite the appellant’s numerous examples to the contrary, that allegedly incorrect assertion is neither verified nor substantiated by the General Court. According to the case-law, the question whether the grounds of a judgment of the General Court are contradictory or inadequate is a question of law.

Second ground of appeal:

—The judgment under appeal infringes the general principles of Union law, namely, the principle of equal treatment and the prohibition of arbitrary decisions. It is the clear practice of OHIM not to equate the element HIPER with ‘hyper’ in the case of registrations. That practice existed before the registration of the sign at issue and exists afterwards as well. The present case is different from cases in which applicants rely merely on previous registrations. The fact that, following the objection to the registrations at issue, ‘HIPER’ trade marks were no longer objected to by OHIM shows that the objection to the trade mark application at issue clearly infringes the principle of equal treatment and the prohibition of arbitrary decisions.

(1) Council Regulation (EC) No 207/2009 of 26 February 2009 on the Community trade mark, OJ 2009 L 78, p. 1.

(2) ECLI:EU:T:2013:14.

(3) ECLI:EU:C:2014:2065.

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