25 Mar 2012
Foreign News : Japan
When posed with the three letters "GTI", the first thing that comes to mind would likely be the Volkswagen GTI but now Suzuki snatches a piece of the GTi.
The Volkswagen Golf has been and still is one of the world’s most beloved hot hatchbacks since the model was born in 1976 in Europe.
In 2004, Suzuki’s tagged "GTi" to“ its Swift nameplate, causing it to raise an issue with Volkswagen as it was thought to be a move that would confuse customers with the two car brands. Just last year, Suzuki was then approved by Europe’s Office for Harmonization in the International Market (OHIM) to use the GTi (i intentionally in lowercase for Suzuki) name as long as it was tagged to the "Swift" model name.
Now, eight long years since 2004, The Malaysian Insider reports that the case was finally heard by Europe’s second-highest court, the General Court of the European Union.The ruling was in favour of Suzuki, in concurrence with the OHIM that any “visual, phonetic or conceptual similarity” between the two cars was negated by the Swift model name. In addition, the court ruled that, “the average customer... would not assume that all vehicles, parts and accessories come from the same manufacturer simply on the basis of the three letters ‘gti’, and accordingly any likelihood of confusion was excluded.”
