In October 2023, the Danish Supreme Court ruled in a trademark case concerning the trademark “TREK”.  In recent years the Danish Supreme Court has rarely dealt with trademark disputes (due to the relatively strict requirements of leave from the Appeals Permission Board to appeal a decision to the Supreme Court), making this case particularly interesting….

The General Court of the European Union (“GCEU”), annulling the Board of Appeal (“BOA”) decision, found that L’Oreal’s K K WATER mark is not confusingly similar to Heinze’s earlier K mark. It was not disputed that the hair treatment goods covered by L’Oreal’s K K WATER mark in Class 3 (a sub-brand of its leading house…

Intellectual property law is designed to confer exclusive protections to intangible assets, to be used in compliance with honest commercial practices. In the absence of a statutory definition of what constitutes bad faith, a body of case law has been necessary to illuminate the threshold of behavioural demerit sufficient to disqualify owners from the benefits…

The prince and his prince house – where he lived happily ever after  The Swiss Federal Administrative Court, as the appeal authority in opposition proceedings, supported the decision of the FIIP and ruled that there was a likelihood of confusion between the younger trademark “Prinzenhaus” (engl. prince house) and the earlier trademark “Prinz” (engl. prince)…

On 5 November 2021, the Danish Maritime and Commercial High Court (the Court) issued a ruling between Kejser Sausage ApS (‘Kejser Sausage’) and Keyser KBH ApS among others (‘Keyser’). The case concerned Kejser Sausage’s gourmet hot dog stand in Copenhagen, which used the trademark ‘Kejser Sausage’. Elsewhere in Copenhagen, Keyser used the name ‘Keyser Social’…

A decision of the German Federal Patent Court dated 13 September 2021 (Case 26 W (pat) 20/20) shows the sometimes thin line between likelihood of confusion and exploitation of the reputation when earlier reputed marks are involved. The mark MARBO RED was filed as German national mark in relation to liquids and flavors for electronic…

On 14 July 2021 the General Court (The Court) issued a decision in a matter between Cole Haan LLC (Cole Haan) and the Danish clothing company Samsøe and Samsøe Holding A/S (Samsøe and Samsøe) in the case T-399/20. The Court found the trademark applied for by Cole Haan consisting of the letter ‘Ø’ from the…

The Swedish Patent and Market Court (PMD) ruled out a likelihood of confusion between two figurative trademarks for “ghost” and “GHOST VODKA” based on their mere visual differences. In fact, the Court concluded that the sigs were dissimilar, without even analyzing the signs on a phonetical or conceptual level. A good outcome for the defendants…

The Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB) erred by not applying the Supreme Court’s two-part Lexmark test in analyzing standing under 15 U.S.C. § 1064 but nevertheless reached the correct result because the Empresa Cubana standard used by the Board was substantially similar to Lexmark. The TTAB correctly determined that a company that owns federal registrations for SPROUTS trademarks in…

As readers may recall, the General Court rendered a judgment around two years ago in the Asolo v Red Bull case (known under FLÜGEL – T-150/17 of 4 October 2018) ruling on similarity, or rather dissimilarity, between alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages. While the FLÜGEL case concerned specifically energy drinks vs. alcoholic drinks, the General Court…