On January 12, 2000, the Court of First Instance rendered a decision in DKV Deutsche Krankenversicherung AG v. Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market (Trademarks and Designs), in which the applicant had sought to register the trademark COMPANYLINE in respect of "insurance and financial affairs" in Class 36. The Examiner refused the application on the ground that the mark was not distinctive, and the applicant appealed the rejection to the Board of Appeals. The appeal was dismissed by the Board of Appeals which held that the word COMPANYLINE was not capable of distinguishing the services of one undertaking from those of another and was therefore devoid of distinctive character.

The applicant appealed the Board's decision to the Court of the First Instance seeking an order directing the Office to register the mark with disclaimers of the words "company" and "line" or alternatively reversing the Board's decision. The applicant argued, inter alia, that the words "devoid of any distinctive character" in Article 7(1)(b) of the Community Trade Mark Regulation 40/94 indicate that a minimum degree of distinctive character is sufficient to prevent rejection on that ground. The appellant argued that the mark should have been examined as a whole and not by dissecting it into two words, namely, "company" and "line", and that the only relevant factor for the purpose of assessing distinctive character is the overall impression of the mark. The applicant pointed out that COMPANYLINE was not an expression used in the insurance and financial affairs service sector and was a coined word. In addition, the applicant stated that the assessment of the mark's distinctive nature should not be confined to the English-speaking world and that the Office failed to take into account that there were other registered marks containing the words "company" and "line" in many member states.

The Court held that the mark was devoid of any distinctive character as the word "company" suggested that the services were intended for companies or firms, and as the word "line" had various meanings and as, in the insurance and financial sector, it denoted, inter alia, a branch of insurance or a line or group of products. The Court held that combining the words, without any graphic or semantic modifications, did not provide the words with any additional features sufficient to render the mark, in its entirety, capable of distinguishing the applicant's services from those of other undertakings. The Court rejected the appeal and ordered the appellant to pay the costs of the proceedings.