Judgment — ECLI:EU:T:2017:68
Date: 2017-02-09
Language of the case: German
Court formation: Eighth Chamber
Subject matter: Intellectual, industrial and commercial property;Designs
Procedure: Action for annulment - unfounded
Origin: Germany

Summary — Judgment of the General Court (Eighth Chamber), 9 February 2017 1. Community designs — Appeals procedure — Action before the EU judicature — Jurisdiction of the General Court — Direction issued to the Office — Precluded (Council Regulation No 6/2002, Art. 61(6)) 2. Community designs — Application for registration — Examination whether application complies with the formal conditions for submission — Representation of the design not suitable for reproduction — No regularisation within the prescribed period — Refusal to treat the application as an application for registration (Council Regulation No 6/2002, Arts 36, 45 and 46) 3. Community designs — Application for registration — Conditions — Representation of the design suitable for reproduction — Concept (Council Regulation No 6/2002, Art. 36(1)(c); Commission Regulation No 2245/2002, Arts 4(1)(e), and 10(1)(c)) 4. Community designs — Procedural provisions — Decisions of the Office — Observance of the rights of the defence — Scope of the principle (Council Regulation No 6/2002, Art. 62) 5. Community designs — Procedural provisions — Statement of reasons for decisions — Article 62, first sentence, of Regulation No 6/2002 — Scope identical to that of Article 296 TFEU (Art. 296 TFEU; Council Regulation No 6/2002, Art. 62) 1. See the text of the decision. (see para. 27) 2. In the procedure for examining designs, EUIPO must verify, pursuant to Article 45 of Regulation No 6/2002 as amended, in particular, that the application for registration satisfies the mandatory conditions established by Article 36(1) of the said regulation. Concerning compliance with those conditions, deficiencies may be remedied pursuant to Article 46 of Regulation No 6/2002, it being noted that, with regard to the conditions set out in Article 36(1) of Regulation No 6/2002, the date of filing of the application is to be fixed as the date on which the applicant remedied the deficiencies, whereas, regarding the other conditions, the original date of filing of the application is to be maintained following the remedying of the deficiencies. In the case where the deficiencies are not remedied, in the first situation, the application is not to be dealt with as an application for registration, whereas, in the second situation, the application is to be refused. A representation of the design which is not suitable for reproduction comes solely under Article 46(2) of Regulation No 6/2002, in that the applicant may remedy the deficiencies, but the date of filing is to be postponed until the date on which those deficiencies are remedied. If those deficiencies are not remedied within the prescribed period, the application is not to be dealt with as an application for a registered design. (see paras 36-38) 3. In the context of the examination of the conditions which the application for a registered design must satisfy, an interpretation of Article 36(1)(c) of Regulation No 6/2002 and of Article 10(1)(c) of Regulation No 2245/2002, read in conjunction with Article 4(1)(e) of the latter regulation, pursuant to which that provision applies solely to designs where only the quality of the representation is mediocre, is manifestly contrary to the system in which the registration of designs was conceived. Article 36 of Regulation No 6/2002, which provides in its paragraph 1(c) that an application for a registered Community design must contain a representation of that design suitable for reproduction, specifies in its paragraph 5 that such an application must comply with the conditions laid down in Regulation No 2245/2002. The latter regulation states in its Article 4(1)(e), to which reference is made in Article 10(1)(c) of that regulation, that the design must, inter alia, be ‘of a quality permitting all the details of the matter for which protection is sought to be clearly distinguished’. That phrase refers to the requirement inherent in any registration, that is, to enable third parties to determine with clarity and precision all the details of the design for which protection is sought. Thus, imprecise representations would not enable third parties to determine unequivocally the matter to be protected by the design under consideration. Accordingly, even if the representations concern more than one design, clarification is necessary not only for the purposes of ensuring legal certainty for third parties, who need to know precisely what the subject of the protection conferred on the design is, but also for accounting purposes, in so far as the amount of fees collected by EUIPO varies according to the number of classes of goods to which the design concerned relates. (see paras 40-42, 45-47) 4. See the text of the decision. (see para. 57) 5. See the text of the decision. (see para. 58)