The body of law drawn from the precedents set by earlier decisions.
A federal district court in Los Angeles erred in concluding that Solid 21’s registered word mark RED GOLD was invalid because the mark was a generic term for jewelry items that were made of red gold, the U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco has decided. The lower court erred in excluding testimony from Solid…
The Trademark Trial and Appeal Board did not err in refusing to register the mark EMPORIUM ARCADE BAR and Design, absent a disclaimer of the word “EMPORIUM,” in addition to the disclaimed term “ARCADE BAR,” the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has determined. Substantial evidence supported the Board’s finding that EMPORIUM was…
After some 10 years, the Lambretta saga has finally come to an end, but it might not really matter that much… anymore. LAMBRETTA is a famous vintage brand for scooters, which has been acquired by Scooters India Ltd (yet another famous European vehicle brand that has landed in India). While the scooters as such have not…
World of Warcraft (WoW) is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) released in 2004 by Blizzard Entertainment. World of Warcraft takes place within the fantasy Warcraft world of Azeroth. Alone or together with others the player has to solve quests in order to level up and have more possibilities. Since some of these quests…
In the latest judgement of the General Court (hereafter GC) on Geographical Indications (hereafter GIs or GI) T 510/15 TOSCORO (versus the GI TOSCANO) the mark applied for was declared partially invalid. In the European Union (hereafter EU) GIs for wine, spirits, agricultural products and foodstuffs are protected as sui generis intellectual property rights that…
The federal district court in San Diego did not err in ruling on summary judgment that Seal Shield LLC failed to establish that its predecessor had used the mark LIFE PROOF in commerce in connection with electronic device covers before Otter Products’ subsidiary TreeFrog Developments applied to register LIFEPROOF, the U.S. Court of Appeals in…
We all know that acquiescence is an absolute defense against infringement which occurs when a proprietor of an earlier mark has acquiesced, for a period of five successive years, to the use of a later registered trademark while being aware of such use. However, neither EU nor Italian (or, to our knowledge, any other national) trademark…
Nvidia Corp v Hardware Labs (GTX) [2016] EWHC 3135 Ch For manufactures of steam engines in the late 19th century, tactics of systematically threatening to sue your competitors’ customers for infringement of intellectual property rights were fair game. Nowadays, businesses in the UK have to contend with the laws on unjustified threats which prohibit such…
Following a request for cancellation, the Federal Patent Court decided to cancel a shape mark for sweets arguing that it exclusively consisted of a shape necessary to obtain a technical result (Decision of the Federal Patent Court of 27 December 2016 on Case 25 W (pat) 59/14). The cancellation request was directed against the German…
The UK Court of Appeal’s (Criminal Division) (CoA) judgment in R v C & Ors [2016] EWCA Crim 1617 provides a positive result for brand owners tackling the thorny issue of grey goods. Here, the CoA held that selling grey goods can constitute a criminal offence under s.92 of the Trade Marks Act 1994 (TMA)….
