The EU is an economic and political association of certain European countries as a unit with internal free trade and common external tariffs.
Yesterday, 2 July 2020, the European Commission announced that it will refer Romania to the CJEU for not implementing the Trade Mark Directive (Directive (EU) 2015/2436) – see here. While the deadline to transpose the Trade Mark Directive is long overdue – 14 January 2019, Romania is yet to proceed with this, making it the…
On 30 April 2020, Advocate General Giovanni Pitruzzella (AG) delivered his opinion in the matter C809/18 P related to the conditions for application of Article 8(3) of Regulation 2017/1001 which provides a specific ground for refusal allowing owners of, in practice foreign, marks to oppose filings for EU trade marks made by their agent or…
CJEU’s recent preliminary ruling in Gömböc Case C-237/19 highlights assessment criteria regarding the registrability of shapes of goods as trademarks. The shape of the Gömböc was refused trademark protection in Hungary because the sign allegedly consisted ‘exclusively of the shape of goods which is necessary to obtain a technical result’ (in respect of toys) and…
On 30 January 2020, the General Court of the European Union confirmed the Board of Appeal’s decision rejecting the opposition brought by Julius Sämann against the EUTM application for the sign shown above, based (inter alia) on the silhouette of its “magic tree”: (Case no. T-559/19). The Court agreed with the Board of Appeal…
Facts The plaintiff provides orthodontal treatment under his trade name Polzar. The defendant runs a network of orthodontists which assists them in marketing their services. The defendant had placed an Adwords ad on Google for the network and used the plaintiff’s trade name “Polzar” as a keyword. The ad itself did not mention the name…
On 16 October 2019, the long-awaited opinion of Advocate General Tanchev was handed down in the case of Sky Plc & Ots v SkyKick UK Ltd & Anr (Case C-371/18). The opinion is couched in terms of public importance and redressing the balance between the monopolistic nature of trade mark rights and the importance of…
London’s weather was very generous to AIPPI participants this year. It was not so hard to get up early and attend the breakfast panel on Genuine Use of trademarks organized by Wolters Kluwer as part of the 2019 AIPPI World Congress in London. The panel was moderated by Eléonore Gaspar (DTMV, France). Eléonore presented the…
It’s been a busy couple of weeks for the UK government, and what can now only be described as the Brexit nightmare rumbles on. Despite the deadline for the UK’s departure from the EU being just over a week away, we are still no clearer on how or when exactly this will take place, with…
On 14 January 2019, on the date of the deadline, the German Trademark Modernization Act entered into force (with the wonderfully uniquely German name of “Markenrechtsmodernisierungsgesetz” – short: “MaMoG”). The Trademark Modernization Act implements the mandatory and several optional provisions contained in the revised EU Trade Mark Directive 2015/2436 of 16 December 2015 in Germany….
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…
