EN Official Journal of the European Union C 233/8

Appeal brought on 22 July 2009 by Caisse fédérale du Crédit mutuel Centre Est Europe (CFCMCEE) against the judgment of the Court of First Instance (Third Chamber) delivered on 20 May 2009 in Joined Cases T-405/07 and T-406/07 CFCMCEE v OHIM

(Case C-282/09 P)

2009/C 233/13

Language of the case: French

Parties

Appellant: Caisse fédérale du Crédit mutuel Centre Est Europe (CFCMCEE) (represented by: P. Greffe and L. Paudrat, avocats)

Other party to the proceedings: Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market (Trade Marks and Designs) (OHIM)

Form of order sought

Set aside the judgment delivered on 20 May 2009 by the Court of First Instance of the European Communities (Third Chamber) in so far as it dismisses, in part, the appellant’s action and upholds the decisions of the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market of 10 July 2007 (Case R 119/2007-1) and of 12 September 2007 (Case R 120/2007-1) refusing the applications to register PAYWEB CARD (No 003861051) and P@YWEB CARD (No 003861044) as Community trade marks in respect of the following goods and services:

— ‘integrated circuit cards (smart cards), magnetic encoded cards, magnetic or smart identity cards, magnetic or smart payment cards, both credit and debit, coin-operated mechanisms for television sets’ in Class 9;

— ‘real estate affairs, accident insurance underwriting, debt collection agencies, financial analysis, insurance underwriting, real estate appraisal, issue of tokens of value, savings banks, exchanging money, cheque verification, issuing of travellers cheques, financial consultancy, insurance brokerage, housing agents, stocks and bonds brokerage, deposits of valuables, safe deposit services, financial evaluation and assessments (insurance, banking, real estate), financial information (insurance, banking, real estate), financial management, financial information, rent collection, health insurance underwriting, marine insurance underwriting, life insurance underwriting, on-line financial information services, computerised interactive financial information services’ in Class 36;

— ‘communications by computer terminals, sending of telegrams, information about telecommunication, electronic mail, message sending, computer aided transmission of messages and images, satellite transmission’ in Class 38.

Pleas in law and main arguments

The appellant relies, in essence, on two grounds of appeal:

By its first ground of appeal, it submits that the Court of First Instance failed to fulfil its duty to state reasons — and thereby infringed Article 253 EC and Article 73 of Council Regulation (EC) No 40/94 of 20 December 1993 on the Community trade mark (1) — by failing to criticise the relevant decisions of OHIM for lacking a statement of reasons. In the decisions referred to, the Board of Appeal of OHIM carried out a global assessment of the distinctive character of the word signs PAYWEB CARD and P@YWEB CARD in relation to the goods and services referred to, without stating the reasons for its decision in respect of each of them. However, a global statement of reasons is possible only if the goods and services have a sufficiently direct and specific link to each other to the extent that they form a sufficiently homogenous category or group, which is evidently not the case here, since the goods and services covered by the application for registration fulfil different functions.

By its second ground of appeal, the appellant challenges the Court of First Instance’s assessment that there is a certain overlap in the scope of the absolute grounds for refusal set out in Article 7(1)(b) to (d) of Regulation No 40/94. According to the case-law of the Court of Justice, each of the grounds for refusal of registration listed in Article 7(1) of that regulation is effectively independent of the others and calls for separate examination. The Court of First Instance thus erred in its application of Article 7(1)(b) in regard to the goods in Class 9 by failing to undertake an actual individual examination of the grounds for refusal laid down by that provision.

(1) OJ 1994 L 11, p. 1.