Audio equipment manufacturer Zoom KK has recently failed to convince the EU General Court and lose its case. It couldn't prove its point that a facial recognition company’s ‘Zoom’ trademark infringes some of its previous marks.
The second chamber of the EU General Court, however, dismissed Tokyo-based Zoom KK’s appeal by their ruling stating, "Company failed to demonstrate a likelihood of confusion between the marks, despite them both being registered under Class 09 of the Nice Agreement. The European Intellectual Property Office’s (EUIPO) Board of Appeals did not mention in its assessment of the criteria for which it judged the likelihood of confusion in prior proceedings."
Facetec is a Las Vegas-based biometric company that first filed an application for its mark 'Zoom' with the EUIPO in the month of October 2016. Its application covered security software allowing users to secure and access all their mobile devices through the feature of multi-dimensional facial recognition identification.
Zoom KK filed an opposition against the mark. It claimed there that the application was infringing on its EU word mark 'Zoom' which it first registered in 1999 under classes 09 and 15. Both the EUIPO’s opposition division and the Board of Appeals dismissed Zoom KK’s opposition which led to the current appeal to the General Court.
At General Court proceedings, Zoom KK appeared unsatisfied with the Board of Appeal decision. It further claimed that the marks were similar. The reason stated was that they both covered 'downloadable computer programs' in Class 09 and that the EUIPO also erred in comparing all the goods associated with the marks to determine the likelihood of confusion.
“It must therefore be held that, in so far as the intended purpose of the goods at issue is specified with a certain degree of precision, it helps to differentiate them beyond their common nature as software,” the Court said. Let's see how this decision will affect the ongoing strained relations between the two companies.
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(With input from news agency language)
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