Wine Law

24 “ordinary” ones, or whether such protection might be supplemented by member states’ domestic law, through additional protection to wine designations. This thorny issue was dealt with — and resolved along the lines proposed by some scholarly studies 30 — by Judgement of the General Court (Fourth Chamber) in Case T- 659/14 of 18 November 2015. The parties were Instituto dos Vinhos do Douro e do Porto and the Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market (OHIM), March 2016 it changed into European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO). As it was the legitimacy of the registration of the brand name Port Charlotte , applied for by a British distillery, which would be a coadjuvant in the case, the judgement is known by that name. The initial judgement issued by the General Court of the European Union in 2015 will be referred to as Port Charlotte 1 , whereas the ruling delivered on appeal by the European Court (Second Chamber) on 14 September 2017, which overrules the previous one, will be referred to as Port Charlotte 2 . We will deal with the case background first and then with the various solutions provided by each court. In 2007, the then OHIM registered the brand name Port Charlotte as a category 33 product, “alcoholic drink”, as defined by the Nice classification of products and services applying for trademark recognition within the European Union. In 2011, Instituto dos Vinhos do Douro e do Porto submitted to the Office an application for annulment of this trademark pursuant to the relevant articles in Regulation nº 207/2009 regarding trademarks within the EU. The distillery was prompted to limiting the registration of the trademark to those products labelled as whisky. The Portuguese claimant invoked the protection afforded to the designations of origin “Porto” and “Port” by various regulations within Portuguese law and by the relevant article in the European Regulation then in force (No. 1234/2007). Briefly, Portuguese law prohibits the use of a designation, for dissimilar products too, as long as that use will bring an unfair benefit from the distinctive nature or prestige of the name protected. However, according to European law the registered brand name is afforded protection against “any direct or indirect 30 RIBEIRO DE ALMEIDA, A. (2010), Autonomia jurídica da denominação de origen. Uma perspectiva transnacional. Uma garantía de qualidade , Wolters Kluwer-Coimbra Editora, Coímbra, pp. 398-399.