Court of Justice 23 October 2003, C-191/01 P (Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market (Trade Marks and Designs) v Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company.)

Also known as

In Case C-191/01 P, the Court of Justice set aside the Court of First Instance's judgment annulling OHIM's refusal to register DOUBLEMINT as a Community trade mark, holding that the Court of First Instance erred in law by applying an 'exclusively descriptive' test rather than the correct standard under Article 7(1)(c) of Regulation No 40/94. The Court clarified that registration must be refused if at least one of a sign's possible meanings designates a characteristic of the goods or services concerned, and that actual descriptive use at the time of application is not required—it suffices that the sign could be used for such purposes. The case was referred back to the Court of First Instance for judgment, with costs reserved.AI