European Justice confirms that ‘El Rosco’ is a brand of ITV’s ‘Pasapalabra’

2023-12-13 14:02:46

The General Court of the European Union (TGEU) – in the first instance of the CJEU – has confirmed this Wednesday that ‘El Rosco’ is a trademark of the television program ‘Pasapalabra’, owned by the British production company ITV, after considering that the Maltese Good Services acted in bad faith when registering a trademark of the same name to prevent its use.

However, the Italian version of the original program, called ‘The Alphabet Game’, decided to add a new final game called “ruota finale” (final wheel), which was owned by the production company MC&F, the parent company of Good Services with registered office in Sliema (Malta).

The final game came to the Spanish broadcast of ‘Pasapalabra’ under the name ‘El Rosco’, which appeared for the first time in 2000 and since the program was broadcast at that time on a Spanish television network under a contract license from ITV’s predecessor entity, the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) attributed the creation of the name ‘El Rosco’ to ITV.

For this reason, in 2021, the EUIPO upheld the invalidity applications submitted by ITV against the technological device brand ‘El Rosco’, registered by Good Services, considering that it had submitted its applications for registration of the disputed trademarks in bad faith, to prevent ITV from continuing to use the final game ‘El Rosco’ within the ‘Pasapalabra’ format and against which Good Services presented an appeal that the TGUE has now rejected in its ruling this Wednesday.

After examining the elements that may determine the existence of bad faith, the General Court notes that Good Services requested registration of the marks at issue for signs that it had not created and in which it had not expressed interest, in a context, furthermore, in the that MC&F and ITV were competing for ownership of the final game.

Likewise, it considers that the litigation between ITV and Good Services led the latter to request registration of the name ‘El Rosco’, which automatically had the effect of preventing ITV from using it, despite having been the one who had used it. created.

The General Court considers that Good Services’ arguments do not demonstrate that it acted in good faith when submitting the applications for registration of the marks at issue and that, taking into account the chronology of the events that led to the submission of those applications, these appear to deviate from commonly accepted principles of ethical behavior or fair practices in commerce or business.