In the opposition proceedings brought by 2nine Ltd. (a UK established organisation) based on the earlier registration of its NOLI mark and the breach of Article 8(1)(b) of Regulation No 40/94, the General Court ruled against the applicant. The Court supported the decision of the Board of Appeal in that “the goods in dispute were dissimilar to the goods in Class 25 covered by the earlier marks. As regards the comparison of ‘sunglasses’ and ‘bracelets, rings, necklaces, watches, belly chains, chokers, earrings’ in Classes 9 and 14, on the one hand, and ‘clothing, footwear, headgear’ in Class 25, on the other hand, it found that those goods could be not categorised as similar on the basis of mere aesthetic considerations. As regards ‘barrettes, hair pins, hair clips, hair scrunchies’, the Board of Appeal found that they could not be considered to be accessories to clothing” (para 31). The goods were produced by completely different industries and were sold by different channels of distribution. “They thus belonged to different markets and could not compete with one another; nor were they interchangeable, substitutable or complementary since one was not indispensable or important for the use of the others” (para 31).

The Court also rejected the applicant’s plea that it was a well-known practice by the fashion designers and retails shops to sell the handbags as accessories, closely associated with clothing and footwear on the ground that the factual allegation was not raised by the parties before the Board of Appeal and can not question the legality of the latter’s decision. Therefore the applicant’s attempt to rely on the case of Avex v OHIM (Case T‑115/02 AVEX v OHIM – Ahlers (a) [2004] ECR II‑2907) failed.

By reference to Pacific’s submissions before the US court, the General Court stressed once more that the “Community trade mark regime is an autonomous system with its own set of objectives and rules peculiar to it and applies independently of any national system” (para 51). Therefore neither the Board of Appeal nor any Court of the European Union are bound by that decision.

As reported on Class46, Switzerland adopted in principle the European framwork on health claims for food products. In fact, Swiss law refers to the list of permitted claims in the sense of art. 13 of the Health Claims Regulation. The new law should have come fully into force on 31 March 2010.

It has now been announced, though, that the old and new law will be applicable concurrently until the end of the year (i.e. a health claim is permissible if it is either permissible under the new or old law). The reason is that the European Food Safety Authority has been swamped with applications for the inclusion of health claims in the list of permitted claims, and was unable to compile the list by 31 January 2010, as foreseen by the Regulation.

This legal situation is very unsatisfactory for the concerned manufacturers, because it is unlikely that the Swiss authorities will decide on the permissibility of health claims under the new Swiss law before the permitted list of the EU has been published to avoid contradictions. Most applications for permission to use special claims may be shelved until further notice, in other words.

This is from the latest Alicante News, and I am quoting verbally - the author obviously had fun citing the juicy bits, and Class46 readers should be able share the laugh:

The applicant sought to register a figurative trade mark for ‘clothing, footwear, headgear' in Class 25, ‘beers and aerated waters and other non-alcoholic drinks' in Class 32 and ‘alcoholic beverages (except beers)' in Class 33.

The examiner rejected the application the sign used sexuality in order to express contempt and violent anger. The village Fucking in Austria , to which the appellants had referred, had only 93 inhabitants, and no-one knew of it. Furthermore, the right of freedom of expression had to have limits in the case of upsetting, accusatory or derogatory signs

The Board held that in Christian terms, ‘hell' is the place of highest torment. It is a place of damnation. In common parlance ‘hell' is a synonym for something negative and causing torment. If the first word element stands for ‘damned', then the sign designates only that which according to popular belief happens in hell.

Under Article 7(1)(f) CTMR signs may not be registered if they are disparaging, discriminatory, blasphemous or derogatory, incite criminal offences or insurrection.

However, the word combination claimed contains no semantic indication that could refer to a certain person or group of persons. Nor does it incite a particular act. It cannot even be understood as an instruction that the reader should go to hell. The meaning assumed by the examiner is, overall, an interjection used to express a deprecation, but it does not indicate against whom the deprecation is directed. Nor can it be considered as reprehensible to use existing place names in a targeted manner (as a reference to the place), merely because this may have an ambiguous meaning in other languages.

Consequently, the Board annulled the contested decision and allowed the CTM applied for to proceed to registration.

I guess its correct to find that you cannot disparage hell - it's a pretty bad place, I've heard.

Btw, the country overview in this edition of Alicante News is for the Netherlands, if you're interested.  One interesting table from the country report:

Top 10 representatives by number of CTMs received from Netherlands-based applicants
Representative	CTMs
NOVAGRAAF NEDERLAND B.V.	4140
ZACCO NETHERLANDS B.V.	2184
MERKENBUREAU KNIJFF & PARTNERS B.V.	1238
ELZAS NOORDZIJ B.V.	1074
VEREENIGDE	844
NEDERLANDSCH OCTROOIBUREAU	761
ALGEMEEN OCTROOI- EN MERKENBUREAU	699
MERK-ECHT B.V.	618
BAKER & MCKENZIE LLP	576
ONEL TRADEMARKS	576

Posted by: Tomasz Rychlicki @ 13.28 
Tags: Poland, Supreme Administrative Court, legal interest, locus standi,

Experts from WIPO's Arbitration and Mediation Center have decided roughly 2,100 cases brought under ICANN's UDRP in 2009, which is about 9.5% less than 2008. The number of concerned domain names, however, is at an all time high. This is due to a single complaint, though, that concerned no less than 1,500 domain names - Class46 called this "the mother of all UDRP complaints". Without this complaint, the number of concerned domain names would have been 3,146 instead of 4,688, which is less than the 3,968 domain names concerned in 2008.

What remains unclear from the statistics is how much of the drop is attributable to the economic downturn, less cybersquatting, or increased competition in UDRP dispute resolution services, namey by the Czech CAC, which offers gTLD dispute resolution services since January 2009. The competition by CAC does not appear to be a main reason so far; while I can't find any statistics on CAC's website, the search only lists 14 UDRP cases for 2009.

Lots more numbers and graphs on WIPO's website.