Latest blog articles

  • Is ‘MOCCA’ in class 30 generic in China?

    What does the term ‘MOCCA’ evoke in your mind, a kind of coffee or a specific brand? This Kat randomly asked this question to her friends currently at the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition Munich. Most of them regarded ‘MOCCA’ as a kind of coffee instead of a specific brand except...

    law_mocca_blog_tian_lu
  • The 'goldfish phone booth' copyright case in Japan

    Nobuki Yamamoto, a Japanese contemporary artist, made an eye-catching work of ‘goldfish swimming in a phone booth’ (‘Work 1’) by December 2000 at the latest. In October 2011, a student organisation called ‘Goldfish Club’ at Kyoto University of Art and Design produced Work 2 and exhibited it for a...

    law_kyodo_blog_oncopyright_tian_lu
  • Van Gend en Loos case

    While the story of the company is a little history of European integration in itself, it was the decision of the European Court of Justice in the case Van Gend & Loos v Nederlandse Administratie der Belastingen (1963) that gave Van Gend & Loos a place in European Union law. The case itself was...

    law_van gend en loos case
  • Judge Land: on Judges and Courts fighting back for the Polish Rule of Law

    The Polish turn away from democracy, named by Sadurski as anti-constitutional populist backsliding, has taken on a new dramatic and bold turn involving the active use of the available tools by the judges to question and address the rule of law problems in Poland. The judges seem to be fighting back...

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  • German Amtsgericht on the duty to rescue

    A 83-year-old man suffered severe brain damage due to a fall in a bank. The man was brought to a hospital where he died one week later. A medical report then showed that the lack of assistance did not (even partly) contribute to the man’s unfortunate death. Still, the refusal to help had certain...

    Oude man op bank