The body of law drawn from the precedents set by earlier decisions.
The Schogetten chocolate cases from Germany and Hungary are an example of how differently courts in the member states can still interpret what is essentially the same trademark. This blog deals with the Schogetten chocolate case in Germany (Higher Regional Court Cologne, 15 August 2014 – 6 U 9/14) and Hungary (Fővárosi Törvényszék – 2015….
The Portuguese market has been recently overrun by new brands and stores of “low-cost” perfumes. Their business relies on the idea of selling low-cost versions of the original perfumes, identified only by the olfactory families; the business model implicitly and explicitly presupposes that such perfumes are marketed as corresponding to the bestselling perfumes, in terms…
CJEU 16 July 2015, C-681/13, Diageo Brands/Simiramida available here Law can be strange and European law even stranger. The CJEU decision in this case reads as another fantasy novel where European exhaustion has become worldwide and an infringement a perfectly permissible act. All this because the overall principle of mutual trust in the administration of…
The Austrian Supreme Court (short “the Court”) recently ruled that a provider of maintenance and repair services for cars of all brands (short “garage”), including Mazda cars, where that service provider is in no business relationship with the brand owner, may not use figurative marks to indicate its services, but only the word mark (decision…
In December 2015 the Danish Maritime and Commercial High Court granted a preliminary injunction against citations and the use of metatags in a remarkable case between Karnov (Thomson Publishing) and Schultz – two providers of online databases of Danish case law. The case is an example of how metatags used together with citations of case…
The Higher District Court of Cologne held in preliminary injunction proceedings that use of a distinctive trademark on amazon.de for displaying other comparable products not originating from the trademark owner may be a trademark infringement (decision of 20 November 2015 on Case 6 U 40/15). The case concerned a practice of Amazon on its German…
The Swedish Court of Patent Appeals invalidated the registration of BERGLÖFSLÅDAN and BERGLÖFSLÅDAN ORIGINAL (in English the “BERGLOF BOX”) based on bad faith because of the trademark proprietor’s knowledge of the common use of these terms by other parties in Sweden. The case concerns the Swedish trademark registrations BERGLÖFSLÅDAN and BERGLÖFSLÅDAN ORIGINAL (in English the “BERGLOF…
Whether use of a trade mark in just one Member State is sufficient or not to support the validity of a CTM is an issue practitioners and Courts have struggled with since the CTM system began. The issue was addressed by the CJEU in their decision in ONEL back in 2012. Yet MINT, one of the first UK IPO…
On 20 January 2016, the Chancery Division of the High Court issued its judgment on the latest appeal concerning Nestlé’s attempt to register the 3D shape of its four-fingered bar. Sadly for Nestlé, in a double blow, Mr Justice Arnold dismissed their appeal against an earlier decision to refuse the registration of their shape mark…
The Swedish Supreme Court has requested a preliminary ruling from the CJEU in respect of an infringement case involving a CTM in Sweden. The case involves the Swedish insurance company Länsförsäkringar AB (“LF”) who claimed that the Estonian construction company Matek A/S (“Matek”) infringed LF’s CTM through its use of a similar trademark . The CTM…
