EUIPO Board of Appeal holds numeric pattern insufficiently distinctive to be a trade mark

In a decision issued earlier this month, the EUIPO First Board of Appeal (the Board) held that a mark comprising of the sequence of numbers from 0 to 23 could not be registered as an EU trade mark (EUTM), since it would be perceived as a listing of the product or an article number. The decision, which concerned Maison Margiela’s Magic Numbers, confirms that a pattern – whether numerical or something else – must be capable of indicating the commercial origin of the goods and/or services in question in order to be eligible for trade mark registration. Read more