Sergio Rossi SpA v Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market (Trade Marks and Designs) (OHIM).
Date: 2006-07-18
22. As to the second part of the third ground of appeal, it must be borne in mind that it is for the Court of First Instance alone to assess the value to be attached to the evidence adduced before it, and it cannot be required to give express reasons for its assessment of the value of each piece of evidence presented to it. The Court of First Instance is obliged to provide reasons which will allow the Court of Justice to exercise its judicial review; in particular they must make it possible for the Court to consider whether there has been any distortion of the evidence submitted to the Court of First Instance (see, to that effect, Case C-198/03 P Commission  v CEVA and Pfizer  [2005] ECR I-6357, paragraph 50).
23. Moreover, the Court of First Instance is free, in its sovereign assessment of the facts, to take account of the fact that a party has refrained from relying on certain facts.
26. It is clear, however, from Article 225 EC and the first paragraph of Article 58 of the Statute of the Court of Justice that an appeal lies on points of law only. The Court of First Instance thus has exclusive jurisdiction to find and appraise the relevant facts and to assess the evidence. The appraisal of those facts and the assessment of that evidence thus do not, save where they distort the evidence, constitute a point of law which is subject, as such, to review by the Court of Justice on appeal (see Case C-104/00 P DKV  v OHIM  [2002] ECR I-7561, paragraph 22, and Case C‑37/03 P BioID  v OHIM  [2005] ECR I‑7975, paragraph 43).
35. The Court of Justice has ruled previously on the scope of such a requirement in the context of Article 38(1)(c) of its own Rules of Procedure. It has held that the statement required must be sufficiently clear and precise to enable the defendant to prepare its defence and the Court to exercise its power of review. It is therefore necessary for the essential matters of law and of fact on which an action is based to be indicated coherently and intelligibly in the application itself (Case C-178/00 Italy  v Commission  [2003] ECR I-303, paragraph 6, and Case C‑199/03 Ireland  v Commission  [2005] ECR I‑8027, paragraph 50).
37. Accordingly, the Court of First Instance is obliged to reject as inadmissible a head of claim in an application brought before it if the essential matters of law and of fact on which the head of claim is based are not indicated coherently and intelligibly in the application itself. It follows that, contrary to the appellant’s assertions, the failure to state such matters in the application cannot be compensated for by putting them forward at the hearing.
50. First of all, under Article 63 of Regulation No 40/94, a decision of an OHIM Board of Appeal may be annulled or altered only on grounds of lack of competence, infringement of an essential procedural requirement, failure to comply with the EC Treaty, with Regulation No 40/94 or with any rule of law relating to their application, or misuse of power. Accordingly, the review of that decision by the Community Courts is confined to a review of the legality of that decision, and is thus not intended to re-examine the facts which were assessed within OHIM.