Passing off and Community Trade Mark

Ive found this interesting article discussing passing off.
this is the link http://ipkitten.blogspot.com/2010/10/passing-off-and-ctm-three-questions.html

There are 3 questions being discuss.

The first one is
"In a case where a French company (hereinafter called 'the proprietor') owns a Community Trade Mark right, if the Community Trade Mark is threatened by infringement activities of a British company in the UK and then the proprietor sues before a CTM court in the UK, is it possible to claim the "Passing-off" right together with the CTM's right in order to prohibit the British company from using its mark in the UK?"


The second question
"If the Community Trade Mark is threatened by the infringement activities of the British company not only in the UK but also in France and then the proprietor sues before the CTM court in the UK, is it possible to claim the passing-off right together with the CTM's right in order to prohibit the British company from using its mark in France and the UK? That is, when passing off right is claimed together with the CTM right, is the "Passing-Off" right applicable in France as well as in the UK, althought France is not a common law country?


The third question
"If the Community Trade Mark is threatened by infringement activities in German company in the UK and then the proprietor sues before a CTM court in Germany, is it possible to claim the passing off right together with the CTM's right in order to prohibit the German company from using its mark in the UK? That is, does the German court have abililty to examine the existence of passing off right, although the Passing Off right is a right derived from the UK Common Law?


For question one, I would say it is possible to claim for passing off right together with the CTM's right in order to prohibit the British company from using its mark in the UK as long as the France company has a goodwill and reputation in the UK.

For question two, I would say no, based on the commentary i had studied. This is because, in order to sue for passing off, the country needs to recognise that there is a passing off. Since, France is not a common law country, they dont recognise this passing off. I hope there is some other law could explain futher in this situation. If there is an infringement, and no injunction is grant for the passing off, this would be so unfair to the proprietor.

Question three, it seems that this is a rather difficult question because some commentary say yes some say no. Iwill need to look up for more information because this is a broad topic. I hope that I will be able to study this in future in my course.