An EUIPO Board of Appeal agreed with Facebook that the figurative mark MYHUNTBOOK would take unfair advantage of Facebook’s reputation. This was, primarily, due to the inclusion of “book” in the mark. Is such protection not too far-reaching?
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...
Current US and EU secondary liability standards do not address all factors to trigger liability. This influences legislation and case law, setting an uncertain secondary liability outcome of IP infringement cases against Internet Intermediaries’. I suggest that tort law can tackle this problem.
Can a single colour alone be a trademark? The question is neither new nor unexplored. However, old wine in a new bottle is presented by the General Court in its decision rejecting an attempt to register a shade of colour for inhalers for asthma and related pharmaceutical preparations, reinstating...
In April 2019, press publishers were granted a new controversial right under the Digital Single Market Directive (Article 15). How have Germany and France dealt with this new right?
Our world is digitalizing, meaning that nearly everything can be found on the Internet, such as press publications. This has led to some worrisome consequences for press publishers. The European legislator has created the press publishers’ right to address some of these effects.
In a recent judgment, the CJEU determined that the geographical indication Aceto Balsamico di Modena is only protected as a whole. This means that the non-geographical components ‘Aceto’ and ‘Balsamico’ are not protected individually.
Only 10 out of the 24 official EU language translations correctly transpose Article 17 of the Directive (EU) 2019/790 on copyright and related rights in the Digital Single Market. These apparent errors mandate urgent action by the European Commission and the EU Member States.
Using the trade mark of someone else to describe how your own products relate to the trademark products is allowed under certain circumstances. Recently, the law changed in this respect, leaving the application of some factors uncertain.
The European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO), just like many other IP offices in the world, has recently seen an incredible spike in Covid-19 related Trade Mark applications. This blog presents EUIPO’s approach in examining trade mark filings that relate directly or indirectly to, or in...
