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Abstract
In January 2006 the ECJ handed down its judgment rejecting the opposition of the Picasso Estate (owners of the trade mark Picasso) to the registration of the mark Picaro for "vehicles and vehicle parts and omnibuses" in class 12. In 1988 the Estate registered the mark Picasso in class 12, and licensed it to Peugeot Citroen, who use it on their Xsara Picasso car. They alleged that the marks were similar (and the relevant goods identical), and that there existed a likelihood of confusion on the part of the public between them. OHIM found no likelihood of confusion between Picasso and Picaro. The Court of First Instance found low-level visual and phonetic similarity between Picasso and Picaro, but did not consider the marks to be conceptually similar because Picasso is the name of the well-known painter and readily understood by the public as such.