In Judgment T-84/08, the General Court upheld the finding of likelihood of confusion between word mark COMIT and figurative German trademark COMET. However, it annulled the contested decision to the extent it had dismissed appellant- Intesa SanPaolo Bank’s claim-for refusing to examine its ‘ancillary appeal’ according to Article 8(3) CTMR. OHIM contended that the Board had misapplied the rule laid down in the Regulation by overly limiting it and rejecting the claim on the grounds that it amounted to an appeal separate from the appeal lodged by the Opponent.

On the substance, the goods and services are identical, the trademarks are similar visually and phonetically, the figurative differences between the signs are too slight and do not alter impression of similarity between the almost identical word which form the sign and dominate them. Conceptually, the Court recognized that there are differences between the marks at issue, ‘comet’ will be understood as ‘komet’ by the German public which leads to a certain distinction. Nevertheless, the shared prefix ‘com’, denoting 'commerce' or 'commercial', is a widely-used abbreviation in the world of business- this point was noted at the hearing by appellant, insisting that its CTM application was made of ‘com’ and ‘it’ (for Italy) as such being a fantasy word. The Court concluded therefore that sharing the same prefix with an identical meaning, the conceptual differences were not enough as to cancel the visual and phonetic similarities.