Hours and minutes: the Advocate General speaks

The Court of Justice of the European Union is being kept very busy by intellectual property matters these days. Today's batch of Curia posts includes the Advocate General's Opinion in Case C‑190/10 Génesis Seguros Generales Sociedad Anónima de Seguros y Reaseguros (GENESIS) v Boys Toys SA and Administración del Estado, a reference for a preliminary ruling from Spain.

The question has been published in English:

"May Article 27 of Council Regulation ...40/94 ... on the Community trade mark be interpreted in such a way as to enable account to be taken not only of the day but also of the hour and minute of filing of an application for registration of a Community trade mark with OHIM (provided that such information has been recorded) for the purposes of establishing temporal priority over a national trade mark application filed on the same day, where the national legislation governing the registration of national trade marks considers the time of filing to be relevant?".

The AG's Opinion alas, is in a smattering of Euro-tongues, including Latvian -- but again not in English. The French version reads like this:

«En l’état actuel du droit de l’Union, l’article 27 du règlement (CE) nº 40/94 du Conseil, du 20 décembre 1993, sur la marque communautaire, exclut qu’il soit tenu compte, au‑delà du jour de dépôt de la demande de la marque communautaire, également de l’heure et de la minute dudit dépôt.»

With the aid of Google's translation service this reads:

"In the current EU law, Article 27 of Regulation (EC) No 40/94 of 20 December 1993, the CTM, it does not take into account beyond the date of filing of the CTM, also an hour and minute of that deposit".

We get the message.  Merpel adds, this was no easy question, it seems.  The AG needed nearly 80 paragraphs and over 40 footnotes ...