Marca Mode v Adidas AG: ECJ Case C 425/98 Confusion.DE

The subject of this paper is the examination of certain issues arising from the adoption of the First Council Directive 89/104/EEC of 21 December 1988 to approximate the laws of the Member States relating to trade marks (OJ 1989 L 40, p. 1). The aim of the Directive was to harmonise trade mark protection within the EU. The chosen linguistic versions gave rise to a number of ambiguities, which subsequently had to be clarified at European Union level through preliminary ruling proceedings. The specific nature of trade mark protection and the differing interests that must be taken into account in each individual case - given the form of the Directive, which granted Member States a not insignificant degree of discretion in its implementation, as well as problems arising from the outset due to the use of differing terms - have resulted in a multitude of judgments in which individual terms of the Trade Mark Directive have been repeatedly redefined and clarified. It was not until 27 March 2013 that the European Commission presented a proposal for a recast of the Trade Mark Directive. It remains to be seen where these efforts will lead.