Rights To Testarossa Brand Won Back By Ferrari
Rights To Testarossa Brand Won Back By Ferrari
The EU General Court has negated the decision of EU’s Intellectual Property Office that Ferrari did not put the rights to genuine use for five years from 2010 to 2015.
The European Union’s (EU’s) second-highest court recently said that Ferrari had been wrongly stripped off the rights to the Testarossa brand name. The luxury car maker’s rights on the mark were cancelled in 2023 by EU’s Intellectual Property Office which said that Ferrari had not put them to ‘genuine use’ for a continuous period of five years from 2010 to 2015. However, the General Court of the EU has negated that decision, stating that Ferrari has used the trademark by giving explicit or implicit approval to dealers selling second-hand Testarossas and by licensing the brand for scale models.
The court reportedly said, "The use of the trademark to guarantee the identity of the origin of the goods for which it was registered, when reselling second-hand goods is capable of constituting genuine use.” The iconic Testarossa cars, made famous by the 1980s television show Miami Vice, were built by Ferrari from 1984 to 1996 and only second-hand models are now available. Germany toymaker Autec had challenged Ferrari’s rights to the brand name.
