The crucial date 31 December 2020 has passed and we are now a month into 2021. Even though, in the last two months, the relationship between the UK and the EU had highly dramatic moments, from an IP point of view, things went smoothly and with an incredible velocity, that we would not have predicted,…
In the High Court case of Sazerac Brands, LLC & Ors v Liverpool Gin Distillery Limited & Ors [2020] EWHC 2424 (Ch), conducted under the Shorter Trial Scheme, the Defendants’ use of its AMERICAN EAGLE sign was found to have infringed the Claimants’ registered rights in its mark, EAGLE RARE. The First Defendant’s UK trade…
When I started writing this article, the news came out that the UK and the EU had reached an agreement on the Northern Ireland border checks, so the UK would remove controversial clauses from the Internal Market Bill that were breaching the Withdrawal Agreement with the EU. Last night, Boris Johnson met Ursula von der…
The Court of Justice has said that reputation and enhanced distinctive character are not relevant to the assessment of similarity of the signs under Article 8(1)(b) of the Regulation and should only be considered in the assessment of likelihood of confusion. This is important because if the marks are not held to be similar, there…
Background In 2016, Jaguar Land Rover (“JLR”) applied to register four UK trade mark applications for the shape marks of the Land Rover Defender 90 and Land Rover Defender 110 vehicles, in Classes 9, 12, 14, 28 and 37: All four applications were successfully opposed by Ineos Industries Holdings Limited (“Ineos”) in respect of most…
In the wake of the UK High Court’s earlier ruling on the long-running SkyKick saga (following the CJEU’s decision), Lord Justice Arnold has, in his latest ruling, considered which party should bear the costs of the dispute, amongst other outstanding issues. Despite the Court’s decision to grant Sky’s application for injunction (to restrain SkyKick from…
It has been several months since our last publication on Brexit and the world is very different since then due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As for BREXIT, this could be another pandemic for several industries as it remains unclear whether there will be a deal or no-deal exit at the end of the transition period,…
Further to Estelle Derclaye’s Kluwer Blog Post, a copy of which can be found here, we take a look at the practical consequences for manufacturers of the recent request for a preliminary ruling from the Court of Justice of the European Union (“CJEU”) by the Belgian Company Court, within copyright infringement proceedings brought by SI…
On 20 May 2020, we received another decision in the long-running dispute between Merck KGgA (“Merck Global”) and their former US subsidiary (“Merck US”). This case dealt with the following five issues remitted by the Court of Appeal: Further consideration of partial revocation of Merck Global’s registered marks; Whether the activities of Merck US constitute…
The UK High Court has laid out its ruling following CJEU’s decision on SkyKick. To recap, the CJEU ruled that overly broad specifications will not automatically render a registered mark invalid and that the lack of intention to use the mark at the time of its application will not necessarily result in bad faith. What…
