MILANO – Who would ever confuse an accessory Chanel with a cellphone Huawei? None, of course. Just as no one would ever think of comparing French glamor with the technology of Chinese smartphones (moreover at the center of a thousand international controversies and the subject of the hard battle with Donald Trump, on which the current US president does not seem to want to change his position). Yet, according to the high fashion house, the brand that Huawei had asked to register had too many similarities with its own.
Wrong – Chanel – according to the EU Court. The judges ruled that the marks in question are not similar. And they added that the comparison must be made on the basis of the respective trademarks as they were filed, without changing their orientation or rotating them. Therefore, Huawei can proceed with the registration, for which it had applied for at the European Union Office (Euipo) in 2017. An opposition from the fashion house followed, but already in 2019 Euipo had spoken out against Chanel. Now the decision of the Court has arrived, called into question by the French.
But what are the two brands like? Both play on the same repeated and crossed letter: in Chanel’s case it is the well-known C, positioned in a mirror image (one to the right, the other to the left). The two letters cross in the center, forming a kind of vertical ellipse. In the case of Huawei, on the other hand, the U’s are intertwined, one facing upwards, one downwards, forming a horizontal ellipse.
Now, the two brands “have some similarities but their visual differences are significant”, the court ruled and therefore there is no risk of confusion on the part of the customer-consumer. Chanel can still lodge an appeal against the ruling but only on aspects of law. At this point the road seems to be marked: this time the Chinese have not copied; nor even glanced at the glamorous brand par excellence.
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