Advocate General Francis Jacobs wrote that the word combination
Doublemint merely describes the product's characteristics. He wrote
that the term "is a factual, objective reference to mint flavour in
some way doubled". An "imaginative element" was found to be lacking
from the mark.
The opinion is not the end of the matter: the European Court of
Justice must make its final decision later this year, although it
will be influenced by the Advocate General's views.
Jacobs contrasted his decision with a previous one that granted
a trade mark to Proctor & Gamble for Baby-Dry. The difference,
he said, was that term's "syntactically unusual juxtaposition." The
inversion of the words Baby and Dry would be unusual to English
speakers; not so Double and Mint, he reasoned.
Jacobs wrote: "The placing of a qualifier such as 'double'
before a characteristic such as 'mint' is not structurally or
syntactically unusual."
He added that, "whilst Doublemint as such may be absent from
dictionaries, the degree of lexical invention deployed in its
creation is essentially limited to removing the space between two
words which may well be used together descriptively."
The mark is already registered in the US, where the product has
been sold since 1914. It is also registered in 14 of the EU's 15
Member States but, according to SFGate.com, Wrigley wants a
Community Trade Mark registration to reduce administrative costs
and improve protection.
