On December 14, 2006 the ECJ Advocate General concluded in favour of the rejection of the CELLTECH word mark in classes 5 (pharmaceutical, veterinary and sanitary preparations, compounds and substances), 10 (surgical, medical, dental and veterinary apparatus and instruments) and 42 (research and development services and consultancy services, all relating to the biological, medical and chemical sciences).
He considered that this mark combined two non-distinctive terms ‘cell’ and ‘tech’ in a nondistinctive way, referring to “cellular technologies”.
He added that, whatever is the relation of the product or service with cellular technologies, the trademark “celltech” for those products or services would be considered as nondistinctive. According to us, this approach is conceivable for products and services of classes 10 and 42 but remains unintelligible for pharmaceutical substances of class 5, which are not technological items.