Order of 11 Feb 2022, C-610/21 (Svenska Metallkompaniet v EUIPO), ECLI:EU:C:2022:107.

ORDER OF THE VICE-PRESIDENT OF THE COURT

11 February 2022 (*)

(Appeal – EU trade mark – Article 170a(1) of the Rules of Procedure of the Court of Justice – No request that the appeal be allowed to proceed – Appeal inadmissible)

In Case C-610/21 P,

APPEAL under Article 56 of the Statute of the Court of Justice of the European Union, brought on 20 September 2021,

Svenska Metallkompaniet AB, established in Åkersberga (Sweden),

appellant,

the other party to the proceedings being:

European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO),

defendant at first instance,

THE VICE-PRESIDENT OF THE COURT,

makes the following

Order

1        By its appeal, Svenska Metallkompaniet AB requests that the Court of Justice set aside the order of the General Court of the European Union of 5 July 2021, Svenska Metallkompaniet v EUIPO – Otlav (Window fittings) (T-191/21, not published, EU:T:2021:470), by which the General Court, having found that Mr Jukka Kivitie, who had signed the application lodged at first instance, did not meet the conditions in order to be validly permitted to represent the appellant before the Courts of the European Union, dismissed as being manifestly inadmissible its action for annulment of the decision of the Third Board of Appeal of EUIPO of 21 January 2021 (Case R 2486/2019-3), relating to invalidity proceedings between Otlav and Svenska Metallkompaniet.

2        The appeal states that the appellant is still represented by Mr Kivitie.

3        The appeal falls within the scope of Article 58a of the Statute of the Court of Justice of the European Union.

4        It is apparent from the last sentence of Article 170a(1) of the Rules of Procedure of the Court of Justice that, where an appeal falls within the scope of Article 58a of the Statute, it must be accompanied by a request that the appeal be allowed to proceed, in which the appellant sets out the issue raised by the appeal that is significant with respect to the unity, consistency or development of EU law and which contains all the information necessary to enable the Court of Justice to rule on that request; if there is no such request, the appeal is inadmissible.

5        In the present case, the order under appeal was served on the appellant on 9 July 2021 and the appeal against that order was received at the Registry of the Court of Justice on 20 September 2021, that is to say, the day on which the period for lodging an appeal expired. However, no request that the appeal be allowed to proceed was annexed to the appeal.

6        Consequently, without prejudice to the question whether the appellant is validly represented by a lawyer, in accordance with Article 19 of the Statute of the Court of Justice of the European Union, the appeal must, in any event, be dismissed as inadmissible pursuant to the last sentence of Article 170a(1) of the Rules of Procedure.

 Costs

7        Under Article 137 of the Rules of Procedure, applicable to proceedings on appeal pursuant to Article 184(1) of those rules, a decision as to costs is to be given in the order which closes the proceedings.

8        Since the present order was adopted before the appeal was served on the other party to the proceedings and, therefore, before it could have incurred costs, it is appropriate to decide that the appellant is to bear its own costs.

On those grounds, the Vice-President of the Court hereby orders:

1.      The appeal is dismissed as inadmissible.

2.      Svenska Metallkompaniet AB shall bear its own costs.

Luxembourg, 11 February 2022.

A. Calot Escobar

L. Bay Larsen

Registrar      Vice-President

* Language of the case: English.