Judgment — ECLI:EU:T:2001:32
Date: 2001-01-31
Language of the case: English
Court formation: Second Chamber
Based on: Treaty establishing the European Economic Community (1957)
Subject matter: Trade marks;Intellectual, industrial and commercial property
Concepts: Signs of which a trade mark may consist;Word marks
Procedure: Action for annulment - successful

Summary of the Judgment 
1. Community trade mark — Definition and acquisition of the Community trade 
mark — Signs of which a trade mark may consist — Condition — Distinctive 
character — Assessment in relation to the goods or services for which registration 
applied for 
(Council Regulation No 40/94, Art. 4) 
II-417 
SUMMARY — CASE T-l 93/99 
2. Community trade mark — Definition and acquisition of the Community trade 
mark — Absolute grounds for refusal — Trade marks which consist exclusively of 
signs or indications which may serve to designate the characteristics of a product —· 
Term DOUBLEMINT 
(Council Regulation No 40/94, Art. 7(1) (c)) 
1. It follows from Article 4 of Regulation 
No 40/94, according to which the 
decisive factor if a sign capable of 
being represented graphically is to be 
eligible for registration as a Commu­
nity trade mark is its capacity to 
distinguish the goods of one undertak­
ing from those of another, that the 
distinctiveness of a sign whose registra­
tion is sought can be assessed only in 
relation to the goods or services in 
respect of which registration of the sign 
is applied for. 
(see paras 17-18) 
2. When it provided in Article 7(l)(c) of 
Regulation No 40/94 on the Commu­
nity trade mark that 'trade marks 
which consist exclusively of signs or 
indications which may serve, in trade, 
to designate the kind, quality, quantity, 
intended purpose, value, geographical 
origin or the time of production of the 
goods or of rendering of the service, or 
other characteristics of the goods or 
service' are not to be registered, it was 
the intention of the legislature that 
such signs should, by their purely 
descriptive nature, be regarded as 
incapable of distinguishing the goods 
of one undertaking from those of 
another. By contrast, signs or indica­
tions whose meaning goes beyond the 
merely descriptive are capable of being 
registered as Community trade marks. 
As regards, in this respect, the registra­
tion of the term DOUBLEMINT 
sought for certain goods which may 
be flavoured with mint, that term does 
not enable the public concerned imme­
diately and without further reflection 
to detect the description of a character­
istic of the goods in question. The 
numerous meanings of that composite 
term — each element of which is a 
common word of the English lan­
guage — are immediately apparent, 
at least by association or allusion, to 
an average English-speaking consumer 
and thus deprive that sign of any 
descriptive function, for the purposes 
of Article 7(l)(c) of Regulation 
No 40/94, whereas for a consumer 
who does not have a sufficient mastery 
of the English language the term will, 
by its very nature, have a vague and 
fanciful meaning. The term DOUBLE-
II - 418 
WRIGLEY v OHIM (DOUBLEMINT) 
MINT therefore has an ambiguous and 
suggestive meaning which is open to 
various interpretations. The multipli­
city of possible semantic combinations 
precludes the consumer from remem­
bering one of them in particular. Con­
sequently, that term cannot be charac­
terised as exclusively descriptive and 
cannot be denied registration on that 
ground. 
(see paras 19-20, 29-31) 
II-419