INDUSTRIES, FASHION | The EUIPO on the protectability of Prada’s triangle pattern

On 19 December 2023, the Board of Appeal of EUIPO (BoA) issued its judgment in case R 827/2023-2 and found that Prada’s triangle pattern lacks distinctiveness for most of the claimed goods and services. Despite Prada’s notable argument that it is an “established trade practice” in the fashion sector to use patterns, the BoA concluded that the pattern at issue is a basic and commonplace figurative pattern which does not contain any notable variation in relation to the conventional representation of a triangle-shaped pattern, meaning that the targeted public would merely perceive it as a decorative element, as opposed to a trademark. It would follow that the average consumer, when seeing the Prada pattern, would consider it immediately as an attractive detail of the product in question, or as a banal decorative element, rather than as an indication of its commercial origin.

Newsletter n. 93 – February 2024