The body of law drawn from the precedents set by earlier decisions.
The Falsified Medicines Directive (2011/62/EU) (FMD) was introduced in 2011 with the aim of safeguarding the public against medicinal products within the EU whose identity, history or source had been falsified. The FMD requires that the packaging of these products now bears certain safety features, such as a “unique identifier” verifying their authenticity and an…
The General Court of the European Union (“GCEU”), annulling the Board of Appeal (“BOA”) decision, found that L’Oreal’s K K WATER mark is not confusingly similar to Heinze’s earlier K mark. It was not disputed that the hair treatment goods covered by L’Oreal’s K K WATER mark in Class 3 (a sub-brand of its leading house…
The district court applied the wrong legal standard for secondary meaning by requiring evidence of specific association rather than a single, anonymous source. In a trademark case between two competing companies that sell oversize Connect 4 games, the U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco has held that a trial is needed to decide trade…
Another high-profile Louboutin case, although this time it’s less about the protection of the red sole as such than the liability of online retail platforms. The Court of Justice (CJEU) handed down a preliminary ruling in a case involving Christian Louboutin on the one hand and Amazon on the other, one referred from Luxembourg and…
Intellectual property law is designed to confer exclusive protections to intangible assets, to be used in compliance with honest commercial practices. In the absence of a statutory definition of what constitutes bad faith, a body of case law has been necessary to illuminate the threshold of behavioural demerit sufficient to disqualify owners from the benefits…
genuine use of an EU trademark within the EU for services provided outside the EU a summary of decision T‑768/20 of the General Court of the EU The background of this decision was an application for revocation for non-use against the EUTM owned by Standard International Management LLC, a US company. Yes, this is…
A judgment of the General Court demonstrates the controversial and problematic nature of retail services marks. The ALDI/ALDIANO Case The case concerns Aldi, the discount chain. An Aldi entity (in the following “Aldi”) filed an application for the declaration of invalidity against the EUTM ALDIANO, registered for “alcoholic beverages (except beers)” (class 33). Aldi relied…
Recently we published an article regarding the decision from the Danish Maritime and Commercial Court on blocking of domain names and websites containing trademark infringing material in the matter between Skechers U.S.A., Inc. II (Skechers) and HI3G DENMARK ApS (HI3G) and others (being telecommunications and internet access providers). Read the article here. As written in…
A preliminary injunction did not vacate an earlier arbitration award in a long-running dispute over the trademarked family name. In a dispute between real estate businesses over the name “Singh” and “Singh Michigan” in connection with real estate services, the U.S. Court of Appeals in Cincinnati has denied an appeal to block a preliminary injunction…
On 2 June 2022, the Danish Maritime and Commercial High Court (the Court) issued a decision (BS 6088/2022 SHR) between Skechers U.S.A., Inc. II (Skechers) and HI3G DENMARK ApS (HI3G) and others regarding blocking of domain names. Skechers operates in the business of selling shoes and sports products and the company has registered word and…
