After yet so many decisions denying trademark protection for slogans in Germany, the Federal Patent Court in Germany recently allowed registration of the slogan mark “Who stops you” (decision of the Federal Patent Court in Case 29 W (pat) 523/21). The trademark was filed for a variety of goods in Classes 9, 12 and 25,…
Will the CJEU take a deep dive into the right of possession? The European Court of Justice will have to deal with this question following a reference from the German Federal Supreme Court (Decision of 23 January 2024 in Case I ZR 205/22). The detailed questions which the Court will have to answer are: …
In a decision of this year, the District Court of Hamburg confirmed that an online-magazine article about so-called perfume dupes being “smell alikes” of well-known perfumes amounted to trademark infringement (decision of 26 January in Case 327 O 130/22). The claimants were exclusive licensees of several well-known trademarks for perfume for the territory of…
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…
According to the German Federal Supreme Court’s decision of 29 July 2021 (Case I ZR 139/20) the gold-colored foil of Lindt’s chocolate bunny is protected by a trademark acquired through use. The Court lifted the decision of the Higher District Court Munich which had rejected an infringement action against a competing product denying trademark protection…
The German Federal Supreme Court today once more decided on cancellation claims against German trademark registrations for square-shaped packaging for chocolate products (Decision of 23 July 2020 in Cases I ZB 42/19 und I ZB 43/19). According to the Court’s press release, it confirmed a decision by the Federal Patent Court which rejected the…
The German Federal Supreme Court recently ruled that the use of only one trademark in search engine advertisements by Amazon was trademark infringing when the underlying link led to a list of offers that included not only products offered under that brand but also those of third parties (Decision of the Federal Supreme Court of…
The question of how far descriptive or non-distinctive trademarks which somehow managed to be registered may be enforced is of particular relevance in jurisdictions like Germany which acknowledge their incontestability ten years after registration. The more recent approach of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) was that it accepted likelihood of confusion also in a…
On 14 January 2019, on the date of the deadline, the German Trademark Modernization Act entered into force (with the wonderfully uniquely German name of “Markenrechtsmodernisierungsgesetz” – short: “MaMoG”). The Trademark Modernization Act implements the mandatory and several optional provisions contained in the revised EU Trade Mark Directive 2015/2436 of 16 December 2015 in Germany….
It is longstanding practice in fashion to designate certain products not only by illegible article numbers, but by names. Many times male or female personal names are chosen. When there is a broad range of products, many names are needed by a fashion company. Many times these will not be needed for a long time,…
