We all know the iconic Aspirin® paper package with the white and green parallel portions against which the name of the product is written in black letters: This package stands out from other pain killer packages sold over the counter (OTC) such as for example or …
In a recent case decided by the Court of Venice (decision n. 2355/2018), MHCS, the producer, inter alia, of the famous Veuve Clicquot champagne, prevailed against a prosecco producer who used orange labels on its prosecco, based on its abstract colour mark “jaune orange” registered as an EUTM. However, absent proof of acquired distinctiveness for…
Polish Supreme Court, Civil Chamber, 9 May 2019, Case No. I CSK 263/18 The Polish Supreme Court (Sąd Najwyższy) overturned the judgment of the Warsaw Court of Appeal (case no. I ACa 962/16) on the basis that courts should assess the overall similarity of trademarks, whether it is phonetic, graphical or conceptual. Conceptual differences not…
Sufficient evidence at trial supported finding that trade dress of iconic French press coffeemaker was nonfunctional; verdict against rival upheld. Bodum USA, Inc. (Bodum), which produces and sells what is recognized as an iconically designed houseware product, the Chambord French press coffeemaker, met its burden of proving at trial that the elements of the claimed…
Recently, the Danish Commercial and Maritime High Court balanced the legal interest in the family name Ørsted against the commercial interest in the name of Ørsted by ruling on the right to register and use several trademarks and domains including or consisting of ØRSTED. This is the second blog on the use of family names…
District court correctly held that trademark owner failed to raise genuine factual issue as to secondary meaning of the asserted mark. A federal district court correctly found that a non-profit corporation that promotes and helps run the annual Fiestas de le Calle San Sebastian festival in San Juan, Puerto Rico lacked evidence to sustain its…
Introduction Defendant Masking is a strategy used in India by plaintiffs in IPR suits to avoid detection of the matter in the Cause List by masking the ‘main defendant’ with the other defendants. The Cause List in Indian jurisprudence are schedules of cases to be heard by the courts on the following day(s). It gives…
We need all the help we can get to fight counterfeit goods. Counterfeit goods are produced and distributed by organised criminal groups and this crime represents as much as 2.5 per cent of world trade, or USD 461 billion. For more information see Europol’s webpage here: https://www.europol.europa.eu/crime-areas-and-trends/crime-areas/intellectual-property-crime/counterfeiting-and-product-piracy. A Danish researcher and associate professor, Thomas Just…
Foreign companies continuing to protect their IP rights in Venezuela face yet more changes related to payment of government fees. These new changes aim to circumvent the US sanctions being monitored and regulated by the US Department of the Treasury and will allow companies to once again pay government fees to the Venezuelan Patent Office…
The mark owner had sent a cease-and-desist letter to the defendant—a competing seller of equipment to the cosmetics industry—more than four years before filing suit, establishing that it knew of the infringement at that time. Although cosmetics equipment company A.C.T. 898 Products, Inc. (“ACT”) convinced a jury that competitor W.S. Industries, Inc. (“WSI”) willfully infringed…
