The EU is an economic and political association of certain European countries as a unit with internal free trade and common external tariffs.
Two months ago I reported about the Draft of a new Trademark Act (Markenrechtsmodernisierungsgesetz) which was supposed to enter into force before the election for the next German Bundestag. Some of the relevant German associations commented in detail on the draft and proposed some well-grounded changes – i.e. the Markenverband, the GRUR, and the Bundesverband Deutscher…
The Spanish Supreme Court has concluded that it is not appropriate to waive the Court jurisdiction from the defendant’s domicile (in this case Italy), which had ruled against the claimant, by creating a link with another entity that it is domicile in another European country (in this case Spain), when that connection is not sufficiently…
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…
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…
To ensure you don’t miss out on interesting IP law developments reported on our other IP blogs, we will, on a regular basis, provide you with an overview of the top 3 most-read posts from each of our IP law blogs. Here are the top posts from January and February 2017. Top 3 Kluwer Copyright…
The Spanish Supreme Court has held that there is no risk of confusion between the word trade mark “Toro” (owned by Osborne Group, S.A., the notorious beverage company) and the word trade mark “Badtoro” (owned by Jordi Nogués, S.L., and filed for goods and services in classes 25 and 35 – relating to clothing-). Firstly,…
On 3. February 2017 the German Federal Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection presented a draft of an act to implement Directive (EU) 2015/2436 of the European Parliament and of the Council to approximate the laws of the Member States relating to trade marks (Gesetz zur Umsetzung der Richtlinie (EU) 2015/2436 des Europäischen Parlaments und des…
This morning at roughly 09:30 am the UK’s Supreme Court handed down their decision relating to whether Theresa May, the British Prime Minster, is constitutionally authorised to trigger art. 50. At roughly 09:35, a plethora of speculative dissections of the decision hit the media, to varying degrees of accuracy. As was covered in the previous…
When doing clearing searches for new trademarks, companies often find themselves facing one or several old trademark registrations that are subject to the use requirement and apparently not in use. Thus, they may consider bringing a cancellation action for non-use against the trademark(s) in question. Companies are sometimes hesitant to bring such actions because they…
Kluwer has finally released the second edition of its “European Trademark and Design Law” commentary, edited by the eminent Charles Gielen (known to many British practitioners from his expert witness role in the WAGAMAMA case), and the co-editor of this blog, Verena von Bomhard. This work appears as a series of short article by article…
