Europarcs wins and loses

Winning is not always a recipe for success.

Some victories come at such a high price that it would be more accurate to describe them as a tactical defeat. If you know your classics, you will have heard the term ‘Pyrrhic victory’. King Pyrrhus defeated the Romans in battle, but lost so many men that he is said to have exclaimed afterwards that another victory like that would destroy him.

Europarcs recently won an opposition brought by a Portuguese company objecting to a European application for the Europarcs logo in defence of its Portuguese trademark, Europarque.

The European Trademarks Office found a degree of visual and aural similarity between the Europarcs and Europarque trademarks. The similarity was only considered to be moderate because the European Trademarks Office did not consider these words distinctive: Euro is a term commonly used to denote European and Parque/Parc refers to a park. Due to the descriptive nature of the words, the graphic elements play a larger role, and as these differed from each other, the similarity between the two trademarks was deemed to be only moderate.

This was the lead-up to the conclusion, whereby the European Trademarks Office examined every aspect of the matter in order to answer the question of whether or not there was a risk of confusion. During this part of the process, the distinctiveness of the trademarks in question are evaluated. The conclusion came as no surprise: the Euro element is completely descriptive and Parcs/Parque has only a weak degree of distinctiveness. The European Trademarks Office cited an old decision, stating that trademark law is not intended to enable a party to lay claim to general terms, as everyone should be able to use these words. In view of the graphic and other differences, the European Trademarks Office felt there was little danger of confusion and therefore rejected the opposition.

The European trademark Europarcs has been given the go-ahead, but as the assessment of these trademarks by the European Trademarks Office as descriptive also applies to the trademark Europarcs, any protection of their trademark has also been eroded by this decision.