Asterix defeated by the roamin’ empire

Wily French cartoon characters Asterix and Obelix have lost their first battle — not against their traditional foes Julius Caesar and the Roman Empire, but against the European Trademark office and mobile-phone company Orange.

Orange, which also trades as Mobistar, wanted to use the word Mobilix to promote some of its products and services and was granted a limited right to do so by the trademark office.

However, the owners of the Asterix series appealed to the European Court in Luxembourg and were told they did not have sole ownership of words and names ending in “ix.”

In a similar case, a Paris based company failed in its attempt to trademark the smell of ripe strawberries.

Eden Sarl had hoped to use it to scent a huge variety of goods from perfumes and shampoo to paper, clothing and leatherwear.

They were refused permission to register the smell by the EU’s trademark agency two years ago and brought their case to the EU’s second highest court in Luxembourg.

They claimed that a picture of a strawberry and the words, “smell of ripe strawberries” was enough to identify the smell so they could trademark it and so be the only company able to use the smell.

But the court in Luxembourg found that the picture and the words would not precisely enough describe the smell.

The judges said: “The olfactory memory is probably the most reliable memory that humans possess and that, consequently, economic operators have a clear interest in using olfactory signs to identify their goods, it is nevertheless the case that a graphic representation of a sign must enable the sign to be precisely identified in order to ensure the sound operation of the trademark registration system.”

But a study carried out by COST, the European Cooperation in the field of scientific and technical research, showed that different varieties of strawberries smell differently.

The Asterix cartoons are published in more than 100 languages including Latin.

The court announcing its judgement yesterday said the words ‘mobilix’ and ‘obelix’ have no meaning in any of the official languages of the European Union.

“However, whilst the term ‘mobilix’ may readily be perceived as referring to something mobile or to mobility, the term ‘obelix’ will readily be identified by the average member of the public with the corpulent character from the comic strip series, widely known throughout the European Union”, the court insisted.

The action takes place in a village in the west of France around 50 BC when they succeed in holding out against the might of the Roman empire.

The hero Asterix is fortified by a magic potion brewed by the druid Getafix and helped by his very fat friend, Obelix who likes nothing better than fighting and wild boar.