Judgment_paragraph 29 · Petco Animal Supplies Stores, Inc. v Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market (Trade Marks and Designs) (T-664/13)

29However, if, as the applicant submits in the context of its second plea, the Board of Appeal made a manifest error of assessment in refusing to suspend the appeal proceedings before it, all of its assessments on the substance of the appeal, in paragraphs 9 to 36 of the contested decision, would necessarily be called into question. The Board of Appeal could not have examined the appeal and found, in part, in favour of the applicant, in paragraph 36 of the contested decision, in respect of the ‘retail services and on-line store services connected with the sale of … sports and sporting goods’ in Class 35, if it had, as the applicant requested it to, suspended the appeal proceedings. Furthermore, if the decision refusing to suspend the appeal proceedings were annulled, the Board of Appeal, before which the case would again be brought, would be required to suspend the appeal proceedings and, following the suspension, draw the appropriate conclusions from the invalidity proceedings in respect of the earlier mark, as regards the analysis of the merits of all the arguments which the applicant put forward against the Opposition Division’s decision.