MORE Nutrition LESS distinctiveness

A distinctive item has a special quality or feature which makes it easily recognizable and different from other things of the same type. To be distinctive means that thing is appealing or interesting because of its special or unique qualities.

When assessing whether a trademark is distinctive, we apply this same criterion. Trademarks must be able to distinguish the goods and services of one business undertaking from those of another. In fact, a mark cannot be registered if it is devoid of this distinctive character.

When examining the inherent distinctiveness of a trademark, this is carried out in two phases: one in relation with the relevant public and whether it recognises a semantic content of the sign itself and, another one on whether or not the semantic content perceived is related to and/or commonly used in trade for identical or similar goods and services.

When the German company Quality First GmbH applied for its trademark “MORE Nutrition”, little did they know (or maybe yes) that their mark would be considered to be purely laudatory for goods and services in relation to foodstuffs, beverages, food supplements and nutrition as a significant part of the English-speaking public will understand it as indicating that the products offer better nutrition compared to other, similar conventional products. This statement has been confirmed by the General Court (GC) in its case dated 05/02/2025, T-219/24, MORE Nutrition, EU: T:2025:128.

If we go deeper in the decision, among the Applicant’s claims in their application before the GC, we will highlight that he asserted that the Board of Appeal failed to take into account the fact that the word ‘more’ in the mark applied for was written in capital letters. The Applicant claimed that capitalisation allows the relevant public to associate the mark with the applicant’s family of marks or even to understand it as ‘over nutrition”.

In this connection, the GC finds that the capitalisation of one of the word elements is totally irrelevant in the assessment of distinctive character considering that the relevant mark is, after all, just a word mark with no other accessory elements.

The protection resulting from the registration of a word mark extends to the word as stated in the EUTM application and not to the specific graphic or stylistic aspects that the mark may adopt or assume.

The GC also indicates that the concept of a ‘family of marks’ does not apply to absolute grounds for refusal, but to relative grounds for refusal. The distinctive character of a trademark must be assessed in connection with its inherent characteristics, without taking other, allegedly similar marks, owned by the applicant. Therefore, and this have been widely indicated by the case law, the GC’s decision leads us to the conclusion that marks must be examined case by case, according to the facts of the particular situation.

This is an interesting case giving us “MORE” light on elements to be considered- or rather confirming them – when evaluating whether a mark is to be considered distinctive or not. Actually, it gives us hints on which elements and facts are not relevant in this frame of mind and which go further to just the consumer’s reaction.  The sign “MORE Nutrition” has given its holder less trademark rights, but it has definitely given us a lot MORE to learn.

If you want to access the full text of the decision, you will find it in the following link:

https://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?text=&docid=295057&pageIndex=0&doclang=DE&mode=req&dir=&occ=first&part=1