Actual lodged application for registration of a trademark and objective need for a national body constitutes a permitted test case

TRADE MARK LAW

Permitted test case: actual lodged application for registration of trade mark and objective need seeking national body, inherent in outcome of case pending before it. 

"32. [...] The Court may refuse to rule on a question referred by a national court only where it is quite obvious that the interpretation of EU law that is sought is unrelated to the actual facts of the main action or its purpose, where the problem is hypothetical, or where the Court does not have before it the factual or legal material necessary to give a useful answer to the questions submitted to it."

Goods and services classification needs to be sufficiently clear and precise; use of general indications of class headings not precluded, but in principle specification of particular goods and services required. 

"64. Directive 2008/95 must be interpreted as meaning that it requires the goods and services for which the protection of the trade mark is sought to be identified by the applicant with sufficient clarity and precision to enable the competent authorities and economic operators, on that basis alone, to determine the extent of the protection conferred by the trade mark; Directive 2008/95 must be interpreted as meaning that it does not preclude the use of the general indications of the class headings of the Nice Classification to identify the goods and services for which the protection of the trade mark is sought, provided that such identification is sufficiently clear and precise; an applicant for a national trade mark who uses all the general indications of a particular class heading of the Nice Classification to identify the goods or services for which the protection of the trade mark is sought must specify whether its application for registration is intended to cover all the goods or services included in the alphabetical list of that class or only some of those goods or services. If the application concerns only some of those goods or services, the applicant is required to specify which of the goods or services in that class are intended to be covered."

IPPT20120619, CJEU, CIPA v Registrar

C-307/10 - ECLI:EU:C:2012:361