The Alicante Appellate Court has confirmed that the use of lists comparing fragrances to well-known perfume brands is illegal. Comparison lists compare smell-alike perfumes with the respective high-priced original perfume brand. These lists are distributed among retailers to inform customers of the “equivalence” between their fragrances and the well-known brand. Lately, retailers have been using…
The maker of Gibson-brand guitars could not go forward with claims that media conglomerate Viacom International secondarily infringed trademarks related to Gibson’s “Flying V” design by selling a ukulele with a V-shaped body and bearing Viacom’s “SpongeBob SquarePants” and Nickelodeon trademarks, the U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco has held (Gibson Brands, Inc. v….
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…
The U.S. Court of Appeals in Atlanta affirmed a district court’s finding that Vito Antonio Laera violated a contempt order issued in a previous trademark infringement dispute with Blanco GmbH + Co. KG (Blanco GmbH + Co. KG v. Vlanco Industries, LLC, February 4, 2016, per curiam). A full summary of this case has been…
In his opinion of 17 December 2015 (Case C-163/15) concerning the trade mark ARKTIS, Advocate General Wathelet proposes that recordal of the license is not a necessary condition for the licensee to be able to bring an infringement action based on a CTM. According to Article 23(1) CTMR, the transfer, rights in rem and licenses…
17 IP-Offices of the European Trademark and Design Network, including OHIM, have agreed on a Common Practise regarding the scope of protection of black and white (hereafter B&W) marks. See Common Practise CP4. This Common Practise is not applicable in e.g. Denmark, as Denmark, Sweden and Norway have opted out of the implementation of the…
On January 1, 2017, the new Swissness legislation will come into force. A last minute attempt to stop the new legislation – which some consider overly complex – has recently been refused. The Swissness legislation will regulate the use of all signs and labels that refer to the Swiss origin of goods or services, and…
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…
