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Publishers Abstract:
Since 2004, the Community Trade Mark system has been enlarged twice to include new Community Members. First, in 2004 the Community Trade Mark was expanded to cover ten new members; secondly, in 2007, a further round of enlargement covered Bulgaria and Romania. The existing case law allows the definite identification of certain central concepts around which Community trade mark case law evolves. On the basis of a comparably high appreciation of the wording of the Community Trade Mark Regulation and the Trade Mark Directive, the Court bases its case law on an essentially teleological interpretation of these instruments which centers on the essential function of the trade mark, i.e. to identify the origin of products or services in the market. While these basic concepts thus in principle seem perfectly capable of serving as a sound basis for the further development Community trade mark law, the European Court of Justice sometimes falls short of their proper concretization.
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