Community Trade Marks Office and Opposition Decisions

The Office has decided to introduce a new layout for opposition decisions with the objective of making the decisions more straightforward and the reasoning unambiguous.  This will hopefully benefit parties to oppositions as well as improving the efficiency of the Office.  There will be six sections to each decision: comparison of the goods and services; comparison of the signs; dominant and distinctive elements in the signs; distinctiveness per se, enhanced distinctiveness of the earlier sign; the relevant public and the level of attention; and the global assessment.  It will be interesting to see whether the new layout meets its objective.