SkyKick: a disappointing end to an exciting series of events

Abstract

Court of Justice of the European Union, Sky v SkyKick, Case C-371/18 (ECLI:EU:C:2020:45), 29 January 2020 Sky, the telecommunications giant, files for extremely long and broad European Union trade marks even though it does not intend to use its marks for all the goods and services concerned. It includes terms like ‘computer software’. The Court of Justice of the European Union was asked, among other things, whether: (i) broad or vague terms like ‘computer software’ were permissible or could cause a registration to be invalid and (ii) Sky’s filing strategy was bad faith. A European Union (EU) trade mark registration features a mark and a list of goods and services, the contents of which are governed by the Nice Classification and the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO)’s own practice. Since the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU)’s IP Translator decision in 2012 (C-307/10; ECLI:EU:C:2012:361) told us that applicants must identify their goods and services with ‘sufficient clarity and precision’, EU trade mark specifications have got longer and longer.