In a recent presentation, Mr Vincent O Reilly, Director of the Department for Industrial Property Policy at the OHIM, lifted the curtain on a new OHIM project. The Alicante Office plans to edit a database for the comparison of goods and services.

Data incorporated in the database will be taken from Office decisions, primarily from opposition, decisions of the European Court of Justice, the Court of First Instance and OHIM's Boards of Appeal. The content should be in English language only (source material will be translated into English when necessary).

The content will be compulsory for examiners, but it will not bind Boards of Appeal. Once tested and considered satisfactory the database will be publicly available online, presumably in the first half of 2010.

As mentioned earlier, the registration of TLDs ( .рф for Russian Federation) will take place starting 16 November 2009. Afterwards, the accreditation of Second Level Domains (SLDs) will commence at the end of November. At the top of the priorities list are the Governmental institutions (eligible for free registration), trade mark owners and the administrative centres in different regions in Russia. The application procedure will then be open for everyone else in March 2010.

The Minister of Telecom and Mass Communications of the Russian Federation Igor Shegolev expects this change to lead to the enhanced use of the Internet services due to reduced linguistic barriers and the easier search system. Additionally, the Minister claims that the use of Cyrillic domains is an important step towards “the electronic Government”.

Documents may be viewed here on the prioritised registrations and the rules on accreditation (in Russian)

Since it was not disputed that the goods in question were identical, the CFI concentrated on assessing the possible similarity between the marks and confusion caused in case of such similarity. With regard to the visual element the Court held that at least an average degree of similarity was required in this case. Although the earlier mark was 2 letters longer than the later, neither this argument nor the one emphasising the existence of letter “y” in “Aygill's” convinced the Court that there was significant difference between the signs. Additionally, having applied the rules of English and French pronunciation of the marks the CFI confirmed the finding of the Board of Appeal in that it was right to deduce the existence of phonetic similarity.

On the other hand, due to a clear meaning of the later mark in several Community languages and lack of such meaning causing mere possible associations with a family name or a place name in relation to the earlier one, conceptual difference was established. However, the difference was not sufficiently strong to neutralise the previously established similarities.

Even though the signs were globally similar only to a low degree, the likelihood of confusion within the relevant Article should not have been excluded. Appeal upheld.

Within the framework of the European Judicial Training Network, the Spanish Judicial School ("Escuela Judicial") has recently organised a seminar called “Community case law relating to trade marks”.

Starting October 21, 2009, the three-day course (specifically addressed to Judges) covered general aspects of Community mrade mark Law like “The concept and functions of the trade mark”, “The risk of confusion/association”, “Well-known trade marks”, “The exhaustion of trade mark rights”, “Real and effective use”, “The limits of trade mark rights” and “Other distinctive signs”.

Such a distinguished event deserved distinguished speakers. And it had them, indeed. There goes the list:

• from OHIM: Mr. Théophile M. Margellos (Chairperson of First and Third Board of Appeal) and Mr. Tomás de las Heras (Chairperson of the Second Board of Appeal),

• from the Bench: Mr. Markus Schneider (President judge of the First Instance Court of Hamburg)  and Ms. Marta Cervera (Judge of the Commercial Court number no. 8 of Barcelona), and

• from private practice: Ms. Cristina Duch (senior associate with Baker & McKenzie Barcelona and External Relations Officer of MARQUES), Mr.  Manuel Lobato (partner at Bird & Bird), Mr. Montiano Monteagudo (partner at URÍA MENÉNDEZ) and Ms. Inmaculada González (attorney).

The course was organised by Mr. Ignacio Sancho (Chairman of the Section no. 15 of the Provincial Court of Barcelona – first IP specialized tribunal in Spain) and Mr. Enrique García-Chamón (Chairman of the Community Trade Mark and Design Court in Alicante).

The “Judicial School” (seated in Barcelona) is an institute depending of the" Counsel of the Spanish Judiciary” (my very free translation of “Consejo General del Poder Judicial”) that organises continuous trainings and specialised courses expressly addressed to judges. Since its foundation in 1997, more that 2,000 Spanish judges have attended its training events.