The body of law drawn from the precedents set by earlier decisions.
On March 3, the Swedish Court of Patent Appeals (‘PBR’) delivered a judgment on the effect of a reputed EUTM in a single member state. PBR held that even if the EUTM ‘SKY’ et al were extensively used and had proven reputation in the UK and Ireland, and therefore in the EU, no recognition of…
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit reversed a trial court’s ruling that JBLU, Inc. violated the Tariff Act of 1930 by importing jeans that were not properly marked with their country of origin (JBLU, Inc. v. United States, March 2, 2016, Moore, K.). Because the trial court erred in deferring to the…
In a recent decision, the Court of Appeal of The Hague concluded that there is a confusing similarity between Lacoste’s device mark consisting of a picture of a crocodile, registered for (among other things) cosmetic products in class 3, and the word mark EAU CROCO for the same products. The case concerned an application by…
The dispute started with the termination of a license contract by which Együd Garage was entitled to use Daimler AG’s trade mark “Mercedes-Benz” and to describe itself as ‘felhatalmazott Mercedes Benz szerviz’ (‘authorised Mercedes-Benz dealer’) in its own online (www.telefonkonyv.hu) advertisements ordered from the Hungarian Phonebook Company (MTT). Despite the request of Együd Garage to…
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…
