Order — ECLI:EU:C:2016:123
Date: 2016-02-25
Language of the case: English
Court formation: Second Chamber
Subject matter: Trade marks;Intellectual, industrial and commercial property;Procedural provisions
Procedure: Action for annulment;Appeal;Application as to costs
Origin: Germany

Summary — Order of the Court (Third Chamber), 12 February 2015 Appeals — Admissibility — Appeal brought by a party to the proceedings before the Board of Appeal which did not participate in the proceedings before the General Court — Not an intervener before the General Court — Appeal inadmissible (Statute of the Court of Justice, Art. 56, second para.; Rules of Procedure of the General Court, Arts 134(1) and 135(1)) Under the second paragraph of Article 56 of the Statute of the Court of Justice, an appeal may be brought by any party which has been unsuccessful, in whole or in part, in its submissions. However, interveners other than the Member States and the institutions of the Union may bring such an appeal only where the decision of the General Court directly affects them. It follows from the wording of Article 134(1) of the Rules of Procedure of the General Court that, in order to be considered an intervener before the General Court, a party to the proceedings before the Board of Appeal of the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market (Trade Marks and Designs) (OHIM) other than the applicant before the General Court must have responded to the application in the manner and within the period prescribed. Pursuant to Article 135(1) of the Rules of Procedure of the General Court, OHIM and the parties to the proceedings before the Board of Appeal other than the applicant are to lodge their responses to the application within a period of two months from the service of the application. A party to the proceedings before the Board of Appeal which did not participate in the proceedings before the General Court within the meaning of Article 134(1) of the Rules of Procedure of the General Court, particularly since it neither proposed its own form of order nor stated that it was supporting the form of order sought by either of the other parties, therefore was not an intervener in the proceedings before the General Court and, accordingly, cannot bring an appeal against the judgment of the General Court under the second paragraph of Article 56 of the Statute of the Court of Justice. In that respect, it must be emphasised that an exchange of correspondence between the services of the Court and an applicant cannot in any way prejudge the admissibility of the action brought by it. (see paras 21-23, 25)