{"id":13410,"date":"2026-06-29T11:22:54","date_gmt":"2026-06-29T09:22:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/orsingher.com\/trademark-the-eu-general-court-on-the-reputation-of-fictional-character-trademarks\/"},"modified":"2026-06-29T11:23:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-29T09:23:09","slug":"trademark-the-eu-general-court-on-the-reputation-of-fictional-character-trademarks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orsingher.com\/en\/trademark-the-eu-general-court-on-the-reputation-of-fictional-character-trademarks\/","title":{"rendered":"TRADEMARK | The EU General Court on the reputation of fictional character trademarks"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On 13 May 2026, the General Court (<strong><em>GC<\/em><\/strong>) of the EU issued its judgment in\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/eur-lex.europa.eu\/legal-content\/IT\/TXT\/?uri=CELEX:62025TJ0024\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">case T-24\/25<\/a>\u00a0(<em>Les \u00c9ditions Albert Ren\u00e9 v EUIPO &#8211; Works 11 Micha\u0142\u00a0Lubi\u0144ski<\/em>), annulling the decision of the Board of Appeal (<strong><em>BoA<\/em><\/strong>) of the EU Intellectual Property Office (<strong><em>EUIPO<\/em><\/strong>) which had refused to invalidate the EU word mark \u201cObelix\u201d registered for weapons, ammunition and explosives. The application for invalidity had been brought by the publisher of the\u00a0<em>Ast\u00e9rix &amp;\u00a0Ob\u00e9lix<\/em>\u00a0comic book series\u00a0based on\u00a0its earlier EU word mark\u00a0\u201cOBELIX\u201d\u00a0and the alleged detriment to its reputation under Articles 8(5) and 60(1)(a)\u00a0of the Regulation (EU) 2017\/1001 of 14 June 2017 on the European Union trademark (<a href=\"https:\/\/eur-lex.europa.eu\/legal-content\/EN\/TXT\/?qid=1506417891296&amp;uri=CELEX:32017R1001\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>EUTMR<\/strong><\/a>).\u00a0The GC found that\u00a0the\u00a0EUIPO had carried out\u00a0an erroneous\u00a0assessment of the evidence\u00a0submitted\u00a0to prove the reputation of the earlier mark.\u00a0Notably, the\u00a0BoA\u00a0had failed to\u00a0properly consider\u00a0evidence showing the sign \u201cObelix\u201d or \u201cOb\u00e9lix\u201d used with the\u00a0\u201c\u00ae\u201d\u00a0symbol and had wrongly excluded evidence merely because the sign appeared together with \u201cAsterix\u201d.\u00a0Furthermore, the\u00a0GC held that the existence of a link between the marks cannot be ruled out\u00a0solely on the basis of differences between the goods and services or the relevant publics, since that assessment requires a global appraisal of all the circumstances of the case, including the identity of the signs, the degree of reputation enjoyed by the earlier mark and its distinctive character.<\/p>\n<p>Newsletter n. 119 &#8211; June 2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On 13 May 2026, the General Court (GC) of the EU issued its judgment in\u00a0case T-24\/25\u00a0(Les \u00c9ditions Albert Ren\u00e9 v EUIPO &#8211; Works 11 Micha\u0142\u00a0Lubi\u0144ski), annulling the decision of the Board of Appeal (BoA) of the EU Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) which had refused to invalidate the EU word mark \u201cObelix\u201d registered for weapons, ammunition [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-newsletters-en-2"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/orsingher.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/orsingher.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/orsingher.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orsingher.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orsingher.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13410"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/orsingher.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13410\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/orsingher.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orsingher.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orsingher.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}