No trademark protection for the slogan “Pioneering for You”

In its decision of 12 December 2014 on Case T-601/13, the General Court of the European Union (“GC”) confirmed the refusal of the Community trademark application for “Pioneering for You”.

The applicant filed a Community trademark application for the word mark “Pioneering for You” for goods in Classes 7, 9 and 11 and services in Classes 37 and 42. The examiner at OHIM rejected the trade mark application for lack of distinctive character. That decision was upheld by the Fourth Board of Appeal of OHIM, whereupon the Applicant filed an action before the GC.

However, also before the GC the applicant had no success: Evidence on the alleged well-known character of the slogan “Pioneering for You” which the applicant only submitted before the GC, but not earlier before OHIM, could not be taken into account by the GC. With respect to the disputed lack of distinctive character, the GC noted initially that according to the case-law of the ECJ the mere laudatory character of a word mark would not necessarily lead to a lack of distinctiveness. However, the sign must possess a certain originality or conciseness, require a minimum of interpretation effort or trigger a thought process in the target public. This was denied by the GC for the slogan “Pioneering for You”, even when an elevated level of attention by the relevant public was to be taken into account. The sign “Pioneering for You” was according to the GC of no particular originality or conciseness. The applicant could not rely on a sufficient originality of the sign caused by the capitalization of the letter “Y” in “You”, especially since this had no impact aurally. Further, the message of the slogan was according to the GC that clear that it did not leave any room for interpretation. Finally, the GC also rejected a thought-provoking impulse by the sign, namely that the relevant public would wonder in which way the applicant would be pioneering, as vague and unconvincing. The GC therefore confirmed that the sign was not capable of distinguishing the goods and services for which protection was claimed.