72With regard, first of all, to the objection that the Court of First Instance required continuous use of the trade mark THE BRIDGE (No 642952) during the whole of the reference period, there is, as is apparent from the case-law of the Court of Justice, genuine use of a trade mark where the mark is used in accordance with its essential function, which is to guarantee the identity of the origin of the goods or services for which it is registered, in order to create or preserve an outlet for those goods or services; genuine use does not include token use for the sole purpose of preserving the rights conferred by the registration. When assessing whether use of a trade mark is genuine, regard must be had to all the facts and circumstances relevant to establishing whether the commercial exploitation of the mark in the course of trade is real, including, inter alia, the scale and frequency of use of the mark (see Case C-416/04 P Sunrider v OHIM [2006] ECR I-4237, paragraph 70; see also, to that effect, regarding Article 10(1) of Directive 89/104/EEC, a provision which is identical to Article 15(1) of Regulation No 40/94, the judgment in Case C-40/01 Ansul [2003] ECR I-2439, paragraph 43, and the order in Case C-259/02 La Mer Technology [2004] ECR I-1159, paragraph 27).
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