The Trailblazers: The Boards of Appeal of EUIPO and CPVO

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the Boards of Appeal of the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) and of the Community Plant Variety Office (CPVO), which are historically the first Boards of Appeal (BoA) created by the European Union (EU). It details the task of the EUIPO and CPVO in the registration and cancellation of exclusive property rights of trade marks and designs and plant variety rights, respectively. It also looks at the legislative proposal for creating a European trade mark as a unitary intellectual property that is granted and cancelled by an independent European Economic Community (ECC) Trade Mark Office. The chapter highlights the rationale of the legislative proposal, which is to ensure an expedient and specialized review of the ECC’s decisions and save the Court of Justice from being overloaded by the expected high number of essentially ‘technical’ cases. It describes the appeal provisions of EUIPO and CPVO that considered as ‘legal transplants’, as they were inspired by those of the European Patent Convention of 1973.