Only the day, not the hour and minute of filing an application for a Community trade mark, is relevant to determinate which application is older
02-12-2012 Print this page
Only the day, not the hour and minute of filing an application for a Community trade mark, is relevant to determinate which application is older.
The question referred for a preliminary ruling by the referring Spanish court is whether Article 27 of Regulation No 40/94 must be interpreted in such a way as to enable account to be taken not only of the day but alsof of the hour and minute of filing a application for registration of a Community trade mark with OHIM for the purposes of establishing temporal priority over a national trade mark application filed on the same day, where the national legislation governing the registration of national trade marks considers the time of filing to be relevant. The CJEU answered the question in the negative.
In the opinion of the CJEU: "Article 27 of Regulation No 40/94 as amended must be interpreted as precluding account being taken not only of the day but also of the hour and minute of filing of an application for a Community trade mark with OHIM for the purposes of establishing that trade mark’s priority over a national trade mark filed on the same day, where, according to the national legislation governing the registration of national trade marks, the hour and minute of filing are relevant in that regard."
IPPT20120322, CJEU, Genesis v Boys Toys
