EUROPEAN UNION: Overall Impressions of doqo and DoDo Exclude any Likelihood of Confusion

In opposition proceedings, the General Court (GC) held that there was no likelihood of confusion between the sign and mark shown below (T-298/24).

The applicant applied to register this figurative sign (the sign) in Classes 9, 35, 38, and 42:

The application was opposed under Article 8(1)(b) of Regulation (EU) 2017/1001 because of the earlier figurative mark (the mark) shown below in Classes 35 and 38:

The Second Board of Appeal (BoA) rejected the opposition. The GC’s decision on April 30, 2025, upheld the BoA’s decision.

The BoA correctly assessed the visual similarity as very low. The green speech bubbles facing opposite directions were missing from the sign and the standard white typeface of the mark differed from the sign’s stylized blue typeface.

The speech bubbles of the mark created a distance between the two-word elements (with the upper-case letter D reinforcing the separation), whereas the sign had a homogeneous structure because of the typeface and exclusive use of lowercase letters. The identical first two letters did not change these overall impressions.

The BoA had also correctly found conceptual difference. If the mark was perceived as the English verb “to do” or to refer to an extinct bird, then it was conceptually different from the sign but, more likely, the mark and sign had no meaning to a significant part of the relevant public, so a conceptual comparison was impossible.

However, the BoA had made an error in the assessment of phonetic similarity as low. The first syllables were identical. The second syllables “qo” and “do” differed in their first sound (“q” and “d,” respectively), but had a common final sound. The mark and sign both had a two-syllable rhythm and the impact of the “q” in the sign and the “d” in the mark on the sound and rhythm could not be overestimated. The phonetic similarity was, therefore, average.

However, despite that error of assessment and the possibility of imperfect recollection by the relevant public, the BoA had concluded correctly that the overall impressions of the mark and sign excluded any likelihood of confusion. The identity/similarity of the goods/services was offset by the low degree of overall similarity between the mark and sign. The BoA had correctly applied the principle of interdependence. There was no automatic basis for finding a likelihood of confusion where goods/services were identical but where there was low similarity between the sign and mark.

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