Justice protects the form of a lipstick from Guerlain

(Brussels) The European Union court agreed on Wednesday to the Guerlain brand (LVMH group) which wanted to protect a form of lipstick stick to the appearance recalling "a boat hull".

The prestigious French brand of cosmetics, whose origins date back to 1828, had filed in September 2020 an appeal against the refusal by the Office of the European Union for Intellectual Property (EUIPO) to protect the form "oblong, conical and cylindricalFrom this beauty product against any imitation.

Unlike EUIPO, the court "judges that the requested brand has a distinctive character, because it significantly diverges from the standard and habits of the lipstick sector," he said in a press release.

The court believes that "this form recalls that of a boat or a basket hull", and "differs significantly from the images taken into consideration by the recourse chamber and which, for the most part, represented lipstickscylindrical and parallelepipedal ”.

In addition, "the presence of the small oval form in relief is unusual and contributes to the unusual appearance of the requested brand.Finally, the fact that the lipstick represented by this brand cannot be positioned vertically reinforces the unusual visual aspect of its form, "according to the same source.

"Consequently, the court judges that the relevant public will be surprised by this easily memorizable form [...] therefore, the requested brand has a distinctive character allowing it to be recorded," concludes the European jurisdiction.