The Advocate General’s opinion in the DOUBLEMINT case had suggested that many of the outstanding issues which have arisen from the decision of the European Court of Justice in the BABY-DRY case (see our February 2002 Newsletter) would be resolved when the decision of the full Court was delivered. It was therefore an anticlimax when the judgment in Wm Wrigley Jr. Co. v. OHIM (ECJT-193/99) was published. The decision is very short and, in fact, it neither attempts to follow BABY-DRY nor to qualify or overrule the decision in that case. The judgement is based only upon the provisions of Article 7 (1)(c) of Community Trade Mark Regulation 40/94 covering relative grounds for refusal. The finding of the Court of First Instance (CFI) that DOUBLEMINT was registrable for confectionery and chewing gum because it was not exclusively descriptive in that it had a variety of possible meanings, such as, that it was a product that may either contain (a) a double quantity of mint or (b) a flavoring of two different types of mint, was reversed. Following just one strand of the opinion of the Advocate General, the full European Court has held that a sign must be refused registration if at least one of its alternative meanings designates the goods or their characteristics as is the case with the mark DOUBLEMINT.

The case has now been remanded to the CFI for further consideration rather than specifically overturning that Court’s earlier decision, so the CFI will now be asked to apply the test that the full Court has determined is appropriate. It seems unlikely that this case will now be the landmark decision that has been awaited to clarify the uncertainties caused by the BABY-DRY decision as the CFI will be put in a position of having to refuse the mark under Article 7(1)(c) and none of the other issues raised by the case will need to be determined.