Chanel wins at the EUIPO: the office upholds its opposition against a Romanian perfume bottle that imitated the No. 5 flacon

Chanel has won a new battle in the defence of its most famous bottle. The European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO), based in Alicante, has upheld the opposition filed by the French maison against a trade mark application by the Romanian company Chaos Perfumes, which sought to register a black flacon with a gold label for perfumery products.

A bottle with a century of reputation

Chanel's opposition rests on the reputation of the No. 5 flacon, marketed since the 1924 agreement between Gabrielle Chanel and the Wertheimer brothers, and immortalised by Warhol in his 1985 Ads series. The house recalls that the bottle has fronted campaigns with Catherine Deneuve, Nicole Kidman and Brad Pitt, and that the house relied on a French three-dimensional trade mark protecting the bottle silhouette, which allowed it to prove renown in France alone rather than face the evidentiary burden of the whole Union, as Pablo López Ronda (PONS IP) notes in the same report.

The contested application was filed in April 2024 and consisted of a black bottle with a gold label for perfumery goods. The EUIPO has upheld the opposition on the ground that the applied-for sign would take unfair advantage of the distinctive character and reputation of the Chanel flacon, creating a risk of association among the public. The decision can be appealed before the office's own Boards of Appeal.

Trade dress litigation keeps growing

The case adds to a string of disputes over the protection of product and packaging shapes, a territory where luxury and cosmetics brands are especially active. For trade mark practitioners, the decision confirms that reputation claims for three-dimensional marks work when the evidence of recognition —advertising investment, cultural presence, longevity— is solidly documented. The stakes in these proceedings are rising across the sector, much as in the 670 million euro claim against the cardboard cartel, where private enforcement is reaching unprecedented figures.

Why the case matters for brand strategy

The EUIPO's decision confirms that packaging shapes with consolidated recognition enjoy protection comparable to that of word marks, provided the evidence of reputation is well built: advertising investment, media presence, longevity in the market and cultural references. For luxury and cosmetics companies, the lesson is that the register of three-dimensional marks, combined with a documented reputation file, allows acting against imitations that do not copy the name but the silhouette.

For applicants on the other side, the case is a warning about the due diligence required before filing packaging designs: clearance searches must cover three-dimensional marks with renown, not only word and figurative signs. And for the office's practice, the decision illustrates the application of the unfair-advantage doctrine to trade dress, a ground of opposition that does not require proving confusion but the exploitation of the earlier sign's image.

The bottle litigation also has a reputational dimension that transcends the register: each upheld opposition reinforces the narrative of authenticity on which luxury builds its prices. In that sense, the investment in these proceedings is not only defensive but part of the brand's value management. Chanel, which has protected the No. 5 flacon for a century through successive registers and campaigns, treats the shape of its bottle as a strategic asset whose defence admits no exceptions, and the Alicante decision rewards that consistency.

For the Romanian applicant, the route now is either to accept the refusal or to appeal before the EUIPO's Boards of Appeal, with the possibility of reaching the General Court of the EU in Luxembourg. Recent practice shows that trade-dress cases are decided on the strength of the reputation file, and few files in the sector are as documented as that of the No. 5.

Source: El Confidencial (27 October 2026), verified 3 November 2026.

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