Information;Order — ECLI:EU:T:2025:37
Date: 2025-01-14
Language of the case: English
Court formation: Second Chamber
Subject matter: Trade marks;Intellectual, industrial and commercial property
Procedure: Action for annulment - inadmissible
Origin: Portugal

summary of those pleas. Those particulars must be sufficiently clear and precise to enable the defendant to prepare its defence and the Court to rule on the action, if necessary without other supporting information. In order to guarantee legal certainty and the sound administration of justice, it is necessary, for an action to be admissible, that the essential matters of law and fact relied on are stated, at least in summary form, coherently and intelligibly in the application itself (see, to that effect, order of 5 May 2022, Aziz v EEAS, T‑789/21, not published, EU:T:2022:288, paragraph 5 and the case-law cited). 21 It follows that the applicant is required to set out in a sufficiently clear and precise manner the main elements on which its action is based, and the Court cannot be obliged, due to a lack of rigour on the part of the applicant, to reconstruct the legal structure intended to support the pleas and arguments relied on by bringing together various diffuse elements of the application or by seeking to adapt those elements to the content of the contested measure. To decide otherwise would be contrary to the principle of the sound administration of justice, to the principle that the subject matter of an action is delimited by the parties, and to the defendant’s rights of defence (see, by analogy, order of 5 May 2022, Aziz v EEAS, T‑789/21, not published, EU:T:2022:288, paragraph 6 and the case-law cited). 22 In the present case, although the application states that it seeks the annulment of the contested decision, a copy of which was only appended to the application following it being put in order upon the Registry’s request, pursuant to Article 177(6) of the Rules of Procedure, no reference is made, in the body of the application to the Board of Appeal, to any passage of the contested decision or to the reasoning set out therein for dismissing the appeal against the decision of the Opposition Division. 23 In that regard, it must be noted, as EUIPO and the intervener point out, that the arguments set out in the application merely reproduce, often verbatim, the arguments previously set out by the applicant before the Board of Appeal in its statement of 29 September 2023 stating the grounds of appeal against the decision of the Opposition Division. 24 As set out in paragraph 11 of the contested decision, the arguments put forward in that statement are based, in essence, first, on the lack of information given on the documents considered to be inconclusive and on the fact that almost all the documents contain information relating to sales volume (first and fourth indents of paragraph 10 of the contested decision); second, on the fact that, at the very least, documents 10, 12, 16 to 18, 21 and 22 should have been taken into account in order to demonstrate genuine use of the earlier mark; third, the fact that the documents not falling within the period of use would still have probative value; and, fourth, the fact that, under certain conditions, indirect or circumstantial evidence may also be suitable to demonstrate genuine use. Those four arguments constitute the four pleas in law in the application. 25 Furthermore, it is apparent from the contested decision that the Board of Appeal defined its position on the arguments put forward by the applicant in its statement of 29 September 2023 (see paragraphs 11 to 14 above). For the Board of Appeal, the reason for rejecting the opposition was no longer, as was apparent from the Opposition Division’s decision, within the question as to whether the documents provided by the applicant related to the relevant period of use, but in the fact that, even if all the documents provided were relevant as regards time, they still did not make it possible to establish genuine use in so far as they did not concern the goods in Class 3 on which the opposition is based, but goods unrelated to cosmetic products. 26 There is nothing in the present action to call into question the reasoning set out by the Board of Appeal in the contested decision for dismissing the appeal against the decision of the Opposition Division. 27 In such a situation, it is not for the General Court to attempt to deduce, from arguments to which the Board of Appeal responded in the contested decision, new pleas in law and arguments which may be submitted against the response given in the contested decision. Since the text of the application is neither coherent nor intelligible in that regard, it clearly does not satisfy the minimum requirements of Article 177(1)(d) of the Rules of Procedure as regards the setting out of the subject matter of the proceedings, the pleas in law and arguments relied on. 28 The present action must therefore be dismissed as manifestly inadmissible. Costs 29 Under Article 134(1) of the Rules of Procedure, the unsuccessful party is to be ordered to pay the costs if they have been applied for in the successful party’s pleadings. 30 Since the applicant has been unsuccessful, it must be ordered to pay the costs incurred by the intervener, in accordance with the form of order sought by the latter. By contrast, since EUIPO has applied for the applicant to be ordered to pay the costs only in the event that a hearing is convened, EUIPO must, as a hearing has not been organised, be ordered to bear its own costs. On those grounds, THE GENERAL COURT (Second Chamber) hereby orders: 1. The action is dismissed as manifestly inadmissible. 2. Ghost – Corporate Management SA shall pay the costs incurred by Nacomi Group sp. z o.o. 3. The European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) shall bear its own costs. Luxembourg, 14 January 2025. V. Di Bucci A. Marcoulli Registrar President * Language of the case: English.