Onvoldoende bewijs dat gebruik van ouder teken "FUNNY BANDS" meer dan plaatselijke betekenis heeft

Gemeenschapsmerk – Beroep ingesteld door de houder van het niet-ingeschreven nationale beeldmerk met de woordelementen „FUNNY BANDS” voor juwelierswaren en -diensten en strekkende tot vernietiging van beslissing R 542/2012 2 van de tweede kamer van beroep van het BHIM houdende verwerping van het beroep tegen de afwijzing door de oppositieafdeling van de oppositie ingesteld door verzoekster tegen de inschrijving van het woordmerk „FUNNY BANDS” voor waren en diensten van de klassen 14, 17 en 35.

Het beroep wordt verworpen. De houder van het oudere niet-ingeschreven Duitse beeldmerk met de woordelementen “FUNNY BANDS” heeft onvoldoende bewijs geleverd om aan te tonen dat het gebruik van dit merk van meer dan alleen plaatselijke betekenis is. Verzoeker biedt armbanden aan op de Duitse markt op de website "funny-bands.com" en onder de handelsnaam "Funny Bands". De door hem overgelegde facturen verwijzen echter niet naar deze domeinnaam of handelsnaam, maar naar de website ootb.de, zodat aangenomen moet worden dat de betreffende armbanden op deze website zijn aangeschaft.

34 It must be pointed out that the applicant admits, in paragraph 11 of its application, that ‘[f]rom these invoices, on[e] can obviously see that [it] has been using the sign “FUNNY BANDS” for the concerned goods’. In the next paragraph of the application, the applicant deduces merely from the fact that it markets a product under the name FUNNY BANDS, that it ‘has been actively using the designation “Funny Bands” in the German market, both as an Internet Domain name and as an identifier for its business branch by the same name in order to actively market “Funny Bands” bracelets’. However, such a deduction is not possible, as the Board of Appeal rightly concluded in paragraph 66 of the contested decision, because, in the absence of any reference to the Internet domain name ‘www.funny-bands.com’ or to the trade name FUNNY BANDS on the invoices submitted, the mere fact that the applicant markets a product under the name FUNNY BANDS does not establish the intensity of use of the rights relied on and does not therefore in any way prove ‘use of more than mere local significance’ in relation to those rights. In that regard, it must be stated that the question, which was raised by the Board of Appeal, of whether it could be sufficient to prove that there is some probability of use of more than mere local significance does not arise, because the mere co-existence of the website ‘www.funny-bands.com’, which offers for sale goods known as FUNNY BANDS, and of invoices which refer to those goods does not necessarily mean that the goods invoiced were purchased on that website, since those invoices mention the website ‘www.ootb.de’, a fact which rather seems to indicate that the goods invoiced were purchased on the latter site.

35 It is apparent from the foregoing that the Board of Appeal did not err in finding that all of the evidence provided by the applicant, including that submitted belatedly, was insufficient to prove use of more than mere local significance. Consequently, the second argument which the applicant put forward in the context of the single plea must be rejected.

Lees het arrest hier.