In a plenary vote that took place on January 17, 2019, the lower house of the Polish Parliament (Sejm) adopted a bill amending the IP Law, the main purpose of which is – not a big surprise these days – to transpose the EU Trademark Directive 2015/2436 to the Polish trademark system (with just a…

It does not happen every day that you can see a trademark case decided by the EU General Court with a Polish claimant (EUTM applicant), represented by his Polish attorney, with a Polish judge as the rapporteur and even with Polish national acting as the EUIPO’s representative. One of very few non-Polish aspects of this…

Time flies so fast… It seems like only yesterday I informed on this blog about the EU Commission’s report on EU customs enforcement of intellectual property rights for 2015. And last week another report from the Commission – for 2016 – was released. As in previous years, the report contains statistical information about the detentions…

Initially, I thought that this would not be a topic for this trademark-specific blog but, having read a very interesting and inspiring post of my Chinese colleagues on specialized intellectual property courts in China, I changed my mind and decided to share with the Readers also some Poland-related updates… Following a meeting held on December…

On September 23, 2016 the EU Commission published its Report on EU customs enforcement of intellectual property rights for 2015 – the annual publication of the result of customs actions at the EU external borders. As in previous years, the Report contains statistical information about the detentions made under customs procedures and includes data on…

There was not much about trademarks during this year’s AIPPI Congress, which was held from September 16 to 20 in Milan (see Panel Sessions and Study Questions). Most of the discussions were focused on such hot topics as the Unified Patent Court or Brexit (the latter of course involving some important trademark-related aspects) and one…

On July 5, 2016 the EU Commission published its “notice on the customs enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights concerning goods brought into the customs territory of the Union without being released for free circulation including goods in transit” (in short: “Transit Guidelines”). The document is a slightly delayed reaction to the recent changes in the…

In two significant legislative steps, Poland has changed its overprotective approach to earlier rights in trademark application proceedings. Traditionally, the Polish Patent Office (PPO) examined relative grounds for refusal ex officio. It refused to register trademarks identical or confusingly similar to those covered by earlier registrations or applications, even if the owner of an earlier…