C-719/25

ORDER OF THE COURT (Chamber determining whether appeals may proceed) 4 March 2026 (*) ( Appeal – EU trade mark – Determination as to whether appeals should be allowed to proceed – Article 170b of the Rules of Procedure of the Court of Justice – Request failing to demonstrate that an issue is significant with respect to the unity, consistency of development of EU law – Refusal to allow the appeal to proceed ) In Case C‑719/25 P, APPEAL under Article 56 of the Statute of the Court of Justice of the European Union, brought on 12 November 2025, La Superquímica, SA, established in Barcelona (Spain), represented by K. Bitton Fernández and D. Pellisé Urquiza, abogados, appellant, the other parties to the proceedings being: European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO), defendant at first instance, Monta Klebebandwerk GmbH, established in Immenstadt (Germany), intervener at first instance, THE COURT (Chamber determining whether appeals may proceed) composed of T. von Danwitz, Vice-President of the Court, J. Passer and E. Regan (Rapporteur), Judges, Registrar: A. Calot Escobar, having regard to the proposal from the Judge-Rapporteur and after hearing the Advocate General, J. Richard de la Tour, makes the following Order 1        By its appeal, La Superquímica, SA, asks the Court of Justice to set aside the judgment of the General Court of the European Union of 10 September 2025, La Superquímica v EUIPO – Monta Klebebandwerk (Monta) (T‑371/24, ‘the contested judgment’, EU:T:2025:854), by which the General Court dismissed its action for annulment of the decision of the Second Board of Appeal of the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) of 21 May 2024 (Case R 2006/2023‑2), concerning opposition proceedings between La Superquímica and Monta Klebebandwerk GmbH.  The request that the appeal be allowed to proceed 2        Under the first paragraph of Article 58a of the Statute of the Court of Justice of the European Union, an appeal brought against a decision of the General Court concerning a decision of an independent board of appeal of EUIPO is not to proceed unless the Court of Justice first decides that it should be allowed to do so. 3        In accordance with the third paragraph of Article 58a of that statute, an appeal is to be allowed to proceed, wholly or in part, in accordance with the detailed rules set out in the Rules of Procedure of the Court of Justice, where it raises an issue that is significant with respect to the unity, consistency or development of EU law. 4        Article 170a(1) of the Rules of Procedure provides that, in the situations referred to in the first paragraph of Article 58a of that statute, the appellant is to annex to the appeal a request that the appeal be allowed to proceed, setting out the issue raised by the appeal that is significant with respect to the unity, consistency or development of EU law and containing all the information necessary to enable the Court of Justice to rule on that request. 5        In accordance with Article 170b(1) and (3) of the Rules of Procedure, the Court is to rule as soon as possible on the request that the appeal be allowed to proceed; that decision is to take the form of a reasoned order.  Arguments of the appellant 6        In support of its request that the appeal be allowed to proceed, the appellant submits that its appeal raises issues that are significant with respect to the unity, consistency or development of EU law and sets out the four grounds of appeal on which it is based. 7        In the context of its first ground of appeal, the appellant submits that, first, the General Court infringed Article 8(1) of Regulation (EU) 2017/1001 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 14 June 2017 on the European Union trade mark (OJ 2017 L 154 p. 1), as interpreted by the Court of Justice, when assessing the similarity of the goods in question, in particular those covered by the mark applied for in Class 16 of the Nice Agreement Concerning the International Classification of Goods and Services for the Purposes of the Registration of Marks of 15 June 1957, as revised and amended (‘the Nice Agreement’), because the General Court wrongly took into account the marketing circumstances of the goods in question during the assessment of the similarity of those goods, even though those circumstances should have been taken into account only at the stage of the global assessment of the likelihood of confusion. Secondly, the appellant argues that the General Court distorted facts concerning the goods in Class 16, within the meaning of that agreement, covered by the earlier mark. Thirdly, the appellant claims that the General Court distorted facts and evidence concerning the use of that earlier mark. 8        In connection with that ground of appeal, the appellant asserts that the General Court departed, in the contested judgment, from the case-law of the Court of Justice deriving from the judgments of 20 March 2020, EUIPO v Equivalenza Manufactory (C‑328/18 P, EU:C:2020:156, paragraph 70 et seq.), and of 2 September 2010, Calvin Klein Trademark Trust v OHIM (C‑254/09 P, EU:C:2010:488, paragraph 47), which precludes taking into account, at the stage of the assessment of the similarity of the signs at issue, the circumstances in which the goods in question are marketed. 9        Furthermore, the appellant submits that clarification by the Court of Justice on what constitutes a distortion of facts or evidence in the context of Article 8(1)(b) of Regulation 2017/1001 would supplement the existing case-law, deriving from the judgment of 5 October 2017, Wolf Oil v EUIPO (C‑437/16 P, EU:C:2017:737, paragraph 24), and thus provide essential guidance for future cases to ensure a uniform standard of judicial review. 10      By its second ground of appeal, the appellant claims that the General Court infringed Article 8(1)(b) and Article 95(1) of Regulation 2017/1001, as interpreted by the Court of Justice, as regards the assessment of the similarity of the goods in question – in particular those covered by the mark applied for in Class 17 of the Nice Agreement – first of all, by repeating, when making that assessment, the same error of law that it made when assessing the similarity of the goods covered by the mark applied for falling in particular within Class 16, then, by not specifying the reference public taken into account to make that assessment, and, lastly, by not carrying out a differentiated analysis according to that public. The appellant also submits that the General Court distorted facts concerning the goods in Class 16, within the meaning of the Nice Agreement, covered by the earlier mark, facts and evidence concerning the use of that earlier mark in relation to the goods in Class 16, and facts concerning the goods covered by the contested mark in relation to goods in Class 17, within the meaning of that agreement. 11      In that connection, the appellant claims, first of all, that the General Court departed from the case-law of the Court of Justice deriving from the judgments of 20 March 2020, EUIPO v Equivalenza Manufactory (C‑328/18 P, EU:C:2020:156, paragraph 70 et seq.), and of 2 September 2010, Calvin Klein Trademark Trust v OHIM (C‑254/09 P, EU:C:2010:488, paragraph 47). 12      Next, the appellant repeats the arguments put forward under its first ground of appeal, set out in paragraph 9 above. 13      Lastly, the appellant submits that there is as yet no case-law of the Court of Justice specifying, in a situation where – as in the present case – the goods concerned are aimed both at the general public and at professionals, which criteria their similarity should be assessed against and, in particular, whether this assessment should be carried out separately according to each of the relevant publics, or from the perspective of the public with the lowest level of attention. 14      By its third ground of appeal, the appellant claims that the General Court infringed Article 8(1)(b) of Regulation 2017/1001, as interpreted by the Court of Justice, by not taking into account, in its global assessment of the likelihood of confusion, the different degrees of identity or similarity between the goods or the different relevant publics – in the present case, professionals and the general public. 15      As regards that ground of appeal, the appellant submits that since the judgment of 29 September 1998, Canon (C‑39/97, EU:C:1998:442, paragraph 17), the Court of Justice has held, on the contrary, that the likelihood of confusion must be assessed taking into account the interdependence between the similarity of the goods concerned and that of the signs. 16      Furthermore, according to the appellant, it is necessary to clarify the approach to be taken in relation to the global assessment of the likelihood of confusion where several relevant publics are concerned and, in particular, to determine whether the marks at issue should be examined globally or from the perspective of each of those publics, or even by taking into account all of the relevant publics. 17      By its fourth and final ground of appeal, the appellant submits that the General Court infringed Article 8(1)(b) of Regulation 2017/1001, as interpreted by the Court of Justice, in that, first, it assessed the ‘conceptual counteraction’ at the stage of the conceptual comparison, even though such an assessment pertains to the global assessment of the likelihood of confusion and, secondly, it wrongly considered that, conceptually, the signs in question were different, even though the earlier mark is allusive to the same concept as that to which the contested mark refers. 18      In that connection, the appellant submits, first of all, that the approach followed by the General Court is contrary to the case-law of the Court of Justice, according to which conceptual differences between those signs may counteract visual and phonetic similarities, but only at the stage of the global assessment of the signs. 19      Next, the appellant claims that, if the conceptual counteraction is applied in isolation at the stage of the conceptual comparison of the signs, it is deprived of its objective, which is to balance, in the context of the global assessment of the likelihood of confusion, the visual, phonetic and conceptual aspects of the signs as a whole, and not to turn that assessment into a purely semantic analysis. Such an approach may lead to a risk of divergent applications of Article 8(1)(b) of Regulation 2017/1001 by EUIPO and by national courts. 20      Lastly, according to the appellant, there is no case-law of the Court of Justice applying such counteraction where, as in the present case, one of the signs in question is allusive to a concept clearly expressed by the other.  Findings of the Court 21      As a preliminary point, it must be recalled that it is for the appellant to demonstrate that the issues raised by its appeal are significant with respect to the unity, consistency or development of EU law (orders of 10 December 2021, EUIPO v The KaiKai Company Jaeger Wichmann, C‑382/21 P, EU:C:2021:1050, paragraph 20, and of 14 January 2026, Gómez Jiménez and Others v EUIPO, C‑665/25 P, EU:C:2026:23, paragraph 10). 22      Furthermore, as is apparent from the third paragraph of Article 58a of the Statute of the Court of Justice of the European Union, read together with Article 170a(1) and Article 170b(4) of the Rules of Procedure, the request that an appeal be allowed to proceed must contain all the information necessary to enable the Court to give a ruling on whether the appeal should be allowed to proceed and to specify, where the appeal is allowed to proceed in part, the pleas in law or parts of the appeal to which the response must relate. Given that the objective of the mechanism provided for in Article 58a of that statute whereby the Court determines whether an appeal should be allowed to proceed is to restrict review by the Court to issues that are significant with respect to the unity, consistency and development of EU law, only grounds of appeal that raise such issues and that are established by the appellant are to be examined by the Court in an appeal (orders of 10 December 2021, EUIPO v The KaiKai Company Jaeger Wichmann, C‑382/21 P, EU:C:2021:1050, paragraph 21, and of 14 January 2026, Gómez Jiménez and Others v EUIPO, C‑665/25 P, EU:C:2026:23, paragraph 11). 23      Accordingly, the request that an appeal be allowed to proceed must, in any event, set out clearly and in detail the grounds on which the appeal is based, identify with equal clarity and detail the issue of law raised by each ground of appeal, specify whether that issue is significant with respect to the unity, consistency or development of EU law and set out the specific reasons why that issue is significant according to that criterion. As regards, in particular, the grounds of appeal, the request that an appeal be allowed to proceed must specify the provision of EU law or the case-law that has been infringed by the contested judgment or order, explain succinctly the nature of the error of law allegedly made by the General Court, and indicate to what extent that error had an effect on the outcome of the judgment or order under appeal. Where the error of law relied on results from an infringement of the case-law, the request that the appeal be allowed to proceed must explain, in a succinct but clear and precise manner, first, where the alleged contradiction lies, by identifying the paragraphs of the judgment or order under appeal which the appellant is calling into question as well as those of the ruling of the Court of Justice or the General Court alleged to have been infringed, and, secondly, the concrete reasons why such a contradiction raises an issue that is significant with respect to the unity, consistency or development of EU law (orders of 10 December 2021, EUIPO v The KaiKai Company Jaeger Wichmann, C‑382/21 P, EU:C:2021:1050, paragraph 22, and of 14 January 2026, Gómez Jiménez and Others v EUIPO, C‑665/25 P, EU:C:2026:23, paragraph 12). 24      A request that an appeal be allowed to proceed which does not contain the information mentioned in the preceding paragraph of the present order cannot be capable of demonstrating that the appeal raises an issue that is significant with respect to the unity, consistency or development of EU law that justifies the appeal being allowed to proceed (orders of 2 December 2025, Dr. August Wolff v EUIPO, C‑432/25 P, EU:C:2025:938, paragraph 14, and of 14 January 2026, Gómez Jiménez and Others v EUIPO, C‑665/25 P, EU:C:2026:23, paragraph 13). 25      In the present case, as the appellant does not identify, in its request that the appeal be allowed to proceed, the paragraphs of the contested judgment which it seeks to call into question, that request does not meet the requirements set out in paragraph 23 above. 26      Furthermore, as regards, in the first place, the appellant’s arguments, set out in paragraphs 8, 11, 15 and 18 above, it should be recalled that the claim that the General Court departed from the relevant case-law of the Court of Justice is not sufficient, in itself, to establish that the appeal raises an issue that is significant with respect to the unity, consistency or development of EU law, given that the appellant must, to that end, comply with all of the requirements set out in paragraph 23 above (see, to that effect, order of 23 May 2024, Levantur v EUIPO, C‑207/24 P, EU:C:2024:426, paragraph 17 and the case-law cited). For each of those arguments, the appellant merely makes such a claim, without specifying, with the required clarity and detail, what the alleged contradictions consist of, and without substantiating its claim through a detailed demonstration. 27      As regards, in the second place, the appellant’s arguments, set out in paragraphs 13 and 20 above, alleging the lack of relevant case-law of the Court of Justice on the subject, it is sufficient to note that the fact that an issue of law has not been examined by the Court does not thereby mean that that issue is necessarily one of significance with respect to the unity, consistency or development of EU law; the person requesting that an appeal be allowed to proceed is required to demonstrate that significance by providing detailed information not only on the novelty of that issue, but also on the reasons why that issue is significant with respect to the unity, consistency or development of EU law (order of 8 January 2025, Peikko Group v EUIPO, C‑577/24 P, EU:C:2025:10, paragraph 17 and the case-law cited). 28      In the present case, such a demonstration is clearly not apparent from the present request, given that the appellant, in that respect, merely makes assertions of a general nature according to which clarification by the Court is necessary in order to ensure a consistent methodology and to avoid divergences. 29      In the third place, as regards the arguments set out in paragraph 16 above, according to which it is necessary to specify the approach to be taken for the global assessment of the likelihood of confusion where several relevant publics are concerned, those arguments are made in terms too general to enable the appellant to satisfy its obligation to establish precisely why the issue raised by that ground of appeal is significant with respect to the unity, consistency or development of EU law. 30      In the fourth place, as regards the arguments set out in paragraphs 9 and 12 above asserting that the appeal should be allowed on the ground that the General Court distorted certain facts or evidence, it should be borne in mind that the fact that the General Court may have done so is not, in principle, capable of raising an issue that is significant with respect to the unity, consistency or development of EU law (see, to that effect, order of 10 June 2025, Domingo Alonso Group v EUIPO, C‑32/25 P, EU:C:2025:426, paragraph 19 and the case-law cited). 31      It is true that the appellant does not argue that the alleged distortions are, as such, capable of raising such an issue, but rather submits that an answer from the Court would clarify the concept of ‘distortion’ in the context of Article 8(1)(b) of Regulation 2017/1001. However, the appellant, in that connection, merely makes assertions of a vague and general nature, without demonstrating why such clarification is necessary. 32      In the fifth and last place, as regards the arguments set out in paragraph 19 above that the application of the conceptual counteraction in isolation at the stage of the conceptual comparison undermines the objective of that counteraction, those arguments must be rejected, since such arguments are not sufficient to establish that the appeal raises, beyond an alleged error of law in the contested judgment, an issue that is significant with respect to the unity, consistency or development of EU law, and the assertion that such a solution could lead to divergent applications of that concept by EUIPO and national courts is, moreover, unsubstantiated. 33      In those circumstances, it must be held that the appellant’s request that the appeal be allowed to proceed is not such as to establish that the appeal raises an issue that is significant with respect to the unity, consistency or development of EU law. 34      In the light of all the foregoing considerations, the appeal should not be allowed to proceed.  Costs 35      Under Article 137 of the Rules of Procedure, applicable to proceedings on appeal pursuant to Article 184(1) of those rules, a decision as to costs is to be given in the order which closes the proceedings. 36      Since the present order was adopted before the appeal was served on the other parties to the proceedings and, therefore, before they could have incurred costs, it is appropriate to decide that the appellant is to bear its own costs. On those grounds, the Court (Chamber determining whether appeals may proceed) hereby orders: 1.      The appeal is not allowed to proceed. 2.      La Superquímica, SA, shall bear its own costs. Luxembourg, 4 March 2026. A. Calot Escobar   T.von Danwitz Registrar President of the Chamber determining whether appeals may proceed *      Language of the case: English.