European Union

It was well established that the condition of genuine use of a trade mark, within the meaning of Art 15(1) of Council Regulation (EC) 207/2009 (on the Community trade mark) might be satisfied where the trade mark was used only through another composite mark, or where it was used only in conjunction with another mark, and the combination of those two marks was, further, itself registered as a trade mark. In relation to Art 10(2)(a) of Directive 89/104, which provision corresponded, in essence, to the second sub-paragraph of Art 15(1)(a) of the Regulation, the court had further held that the proprietor of a registered trade mark was not precluded from relying, in order to establish use of the trade mark for the purposes of that provision, on the fact that it was used in a form which differed from the form in which it was registered, without the differences between the two altering the distinctive character of that trade