Judgment_paragraph 95 · Nelson Alfonso Egüed v European Union Intellectual Property Office (T-45/16)

95By contrast, in the ‘extended’ form of the tort of passing-off, illustrated in the Advocaat or Vodkat decisions, the defendant in an action for passing-off deceives as to the origin or nature of its goods by misrepresenting that they are the product of a particular region, or that they have a particular character or composition. That misrepresentation may be through the use of a descriptive or generic term which misdescribes the defendant’s goods, inducing the belief that they possess a characteristic or quality which they do not (for example the term ‘Vodkat’ used for a type of beverage which is not vodka) (see Advocaat decision and Wadlow, C., The Law of Passing-Off: Unfair Competition by Misrepresentation, 5th Edition, Sweet & Maxwell, London, 2016, points 7-161, 7-166 and 7-281).