On 20th March 2019, the US Patent and Trademark Office had to decide about the conflict between the trademarks of Nike and Cheryl Bauman-Buffone. Cheryl Bauman-Buffone sought registration of her mark “JUST SAY IT” for books and downloadable e-books, both in “in the field of promoting healthy lifestyles encompassing physical, social, emotional and spiritual aspects…
A seller of parody tote bags that prevailed on trademark infringement, dilution, and copyright infringement claims brought by Louis Vuitton was not entitled to recover attorney fees. Case date: 15 March 2019 Case number: No. 18-293-cv. Court: United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit A full summary of this case has been published on Kluwer IP…
It was a long and cold winter in most of Canada – more so than usual and during that time, the Canadian IP community kept busy shoveling snow and preparing for the many amendments to Canada’s Trademarks Act, finally confirmed to be in force on June 17, 2019 (the “coming into force” or CIF date)….
In the US to indicate two things which are truly… incomparable, one says “oranges and apples”. In continental EU, we say “apples and pears”. This case deals indeed with apples and pears. On 31 January 2019, the General Court of the European Union had to decide about the similarity between an apple and a pear…
It’s been a busy couple of weeks for the UK government, and what can now only be described as the Brexit nightmare rumbles on. Despite the deadline for the UK’s departure from the EU being just over a week away, we are still no clearer on how or when exactly this will take place, with…
The Third Circuit ruled that Galderma Laboratories owned the trademark to “Restoraderm” pursuant to a 2002 contract between Galderma’s predecessor in interest and the individual inventor of “Restoraderm,” reversing a lower court ruling that the inventor owned the trademark because a subsequent 2004 contract superseded the 2002 agreement. Case date: 26 February 2019 Case number: No….
Yet another trademark dispute has been taken to court by APPLE. This time, APPLE lodged a trademark opposition against the letter „j“ trademark of an Italian incorporation by the name „Steve Jobs“ in front of the Swiss Federal Administrative Court (FAC) (B-1176/2017 (FAC)). After APPLE had failed to cancel the opposed trademark before the Institute…
Express Oil Change’s use of the phrase “Tire Engineers” in its Mississippi centers was protected commercial speech. Case date: 19 February 2019 Case number: No. 18-60144 Court: United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit A full summary of this case has been published on Kluwer IP Law.
In India, so-called translation cases, where a later mark is (or is alleged to be) a mere translation of an earlier mark leading to confusion resulting from conceptual similarity, are dealt with under the concept of “deceptive similarity”. While earlier decisions seemed to favour a broad interpretation of this concept, the judgment of the Delhi…
In the beginning of this year a decision regarding the trademark right to the name of the iconic Danish faience set with the thin blue line on the edges, was issued by the Danish Maritime and Commercial Court (Decision no. BS.9705/2017-SHR of 18 January 2019). Both the designer of the faience set as pictured here,…
