79In the present case, first of all, the Court finds that some of the statements are made on behalf of distributors such as BIC Belgium SPRL, BIC Netherlands BV, BIC UK Ltd and BIC Violex SA which, according to the applicant's 2002 annual report, are subsidiaries of the applicant, and in which it has a shareholding of at least 99 % (save for BIC Violex, in which the applicant has a 50.5 % shareholding, and BIC Ballograf AB, in which its shareholding is 16 %). What is more, that finding was not disputed by the applicant at the hearing. It must be noted that those statements cannot therefore, by themselves, constitute adequate proof of the acquisition through use of distinctive character by the trade mark applied for, given the significance of the links between the applicant and its subsidiaries. They are only indicative and need to be corroborated by other proof. Secondly, the Court remarks that all the statements, including those of distributors other than subsidiaries or companies in which the applicant holds shares, appear to have been dictated by the applicant, as they are all identical in content. Indeed, it appears that all the statements comprise a preset text which has been translated verbatim into several languages and in some cases even simply photocopied, with blank spaces which have then been filled in by the distributors. Thirdly, the Court finds also that those statements do not make any reference to the data concerning sale volumes in the territory in question and, so far as concerns the importance to the declarant of sales of the lighters in question, they contain nothing but simple, laudatory statements.