Destruction of trademark case law, TDI 2, T-318/09

Audi AG and Volkswagen AG tried to register their word mark TDI once again. In 2003 they lost TDI proceedings T-16/02, since the judges considered that TDI is a descriptive term meaning “turbo direct injection” or “turbo diesel injection” (§§ 6 & 18).

This time they brought the amulet Bild digital, C-43/08, and argued that similar signs CDI and HDI were registered (§ 12). Last week the reply of the EU General Court was: “the applicants cannot validly rely on the registration of the other signs as Community trade marks for the purpose of demonstrating that the contested decision is unlawful” (§ 24).

Of course, we must continue using and comparing trademark case law in this kind of litigation, but the state of case law becomes even more indeterminate.