Polish Supreme Court, Civil Chamber, 9 May 2019, Case No. I CSK 263/18 The Polish Supreme Court (Sąd Najwyższy) overturned the judgment of the Warsaw Court of Appeal (case no. I ACa 962/16) on the basis that courts should assess the overall similarity of trademarks, whether it is phonetic, graphical or conceptual. Conceptual differences not…
The Polish Constitutional Tribunal issued a long-awaited judgment in December 2018 regarding a claim for information under the Polish Industrial Property Act (case no. SK 19/16). It ruled that a trademark owner cannot claim for information against an auction portal to disclose information about entities selling goods and about the quantity and prices paid for…
In a plenary vote that took place on January 17, 2019, the lower house of the Polish Parliament (Sejm) adopted a bill amending the IP Law, the main purpose of which is – not a big surprise these days – to transpose the EU Trademark Directive 2015/2436 to the Polish trademark system (with just a…
It does not happen every day that you can see a trademark case decided by the EU General Court with a Polish claimant (EUTM applicant), represented by his Polish attorney, with a Polish judge as the rapporteur and even with Polish national acting as the EUIPO’s representative. One of very few non-Polish aspects of this…
Initially, I thought that this would not be a topic for this trademark-specific blog but, having read a very interesting and inspiring post of my Chinese colleagues on specialized intellectual property courts in China, I changed my mind and decided to share with the Readers also some Poland-related updates… Following a meeting held on December…
To ensure you don’t miss out on interesting IP law developments reported on our other IP blogs, we will, on a regular basis, provide you with an overview of the top 3 most-read posts from each of our IP law blogs. Here are the top posts from last month. Top 3 Kluwer Trademark Blog posts…
In two significant legislative steps, Poland has changed its overprotective approach to earlier rights in trademark application proceedings. Traditionally, the Polish Patent Office (PPO) examined relative grounds for refusal ex officio. It refused to register trademarks identical or confusingly similar to those covered by earlier registrations or applications, even if the owner of an earlier…
