The court of appeal dismissed the application for the declaration of invalidity of the trademark “IMMO RESO” for the property management and estimations company, finding that it was not a “necessary and compulsory designation of all the goods and services covered by the trademark (…) so that this trademark is valid even if it has a diminished distinctive character due to the use of the contraction IMMO (short for “immobilier” meaning real estate) to designate services relating to real estate”.
It then concluded that this trademark was contradicted by the subsequent signs “MONRESEAU-IMMO.COM” and “MONRESEAU-IMMO.PARNERS”.
The application for a declaration of invalidity of the trademark “IMMO RESO” could certainly have been successful if the court had interpreted Article L. 711-4 of the intellectual property code in view of directive 2015/2436 of 16 December 2015 (which considers void any sign without distinctive character, irrespective of any necessary or descriptive designation) as did, for example, the Paris high court in its decision of 12 January 2017 concerning trademarks “MISTER (+ region)” (RG : 15/03510)
