The judgment provides significant clarification regarding the criteria on which a national court must base its assessment when called upon to strike a balance between freedom of expression and intellectual property rights.<\/p>\n
The ruling originates from an infringement case between Inter IKEA Systems \u2013 the well-known Swedish multinational \u2013 and Vlaams Belang \u2013 a Belgian far-right political party \u2013 which arose following the latter\u2019s use, as part of its election campaign, of trademarks and graphics belonging to IKEA, without consent.<\/p>\n
The \u201cdue cause\u201d referred to in Article 9(2)(c) of Regulation (EU) No 2017\/1001 (EUTMR) \u2013 as well as in Article 10(2)(c) of Directive (EU) No 2015\/2436 \u2013 in the presence of which the proprietor\u2019s right to prohibit third-party use of a well-known trademark is limited \u2013 is not, in fact, further specified in European legislation, with the sources referred to above merely stating the need to ensure full respect for freedom of expression and fundamental rights.<\/p>\n
The Court, citing numerous precedents from its own case law and that of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), in identifying these \u201cdue causes\u201d, therefore gave particular importance to: the consistency of the message conveyed in relation to the trademark and its proprietor; the effective contribution of such use to public debate; the consequences of such use for the proprietor, which must never be disproportionately detrimental to him. Furthermore: the intensity, scope and manner of the use, as well as \u2013 above all \u2013 the impression created in the public that the trademark proprietor endorses the messages promoted.<\/p>\n
In identifying these criteria, however, the judges referred in their reasoning solely to \u201ccommercial uses\u201d of the trademark with a reputation. Only in the concluding part of the judgment, concerning \u201cnon-commercial\u201d uses (Article 10(6) of Directive (EU) No 2015\/2436), the Court emphasised that the balance between freedom of expression and the rights of the proprietor is particularly delicate. From this \u2013 while also applying the general criteria to such uses \u2013 arises the need, according to the judges, to afford broader protection to freedom of expression.<\/p>\n
The Court notes, however, that neither intellectual property rights nor freedom of expression are absolute. The national court \u2013 where, as in the present case, messages of a political nature are at issue \u2013 must therefore balance the conflicting interests, assessing in particular whether the use of the well-known sign poses a risk to the proprietor that the public might perceive support for or endorsement of the political cause (particularly where the proprietor instead promotes opposing values or, in any event, a neutral position), and how intense and pervasive the spread of the political message is, while assessing the actual damage caused to the reputation and distinctive character of the trademark.<\/p>\n
While, on the one hand, the CJEU\u2019s attempt to bring greater clarity regarding the actual scope of the \u201cdue cause\u201d within which the use of another party\u2019s well-known trademark is permitted is to be welcomed, the Court does not appear to have entirely removed the doubts that justified the national court\u2019s referral.<\/p>\n
In the present case, however, the criteria identified by the CJEU suggests that merely exploiting the appeal and reputation of a sign to give maximum visibility to political messages unrelated to the proprietor is unlikely to justify the infringement of the trademark, and may rather risks causing serious and disproportionate detriment to the proprietor\u2019s reputation.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Giovanni Volpi<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Court of Justice of the European Union, C-298\/23, 8 September 2026 The judgment provides significant clarification regarding the criteria on which a national court must base its assessment when called upon to strike a balance between freedom of expression and intellectual property rights. The ruling originates from an infringement case between Inter IKEA Systems \u2013…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-870","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-non-categorizzato"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n