The EU is an economic and political association of certain European countries as a unit with internal free trade and common external tariffs.
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 January and February 2017. Top 3 Kluwer Copyright…
The Spanish Supreme Court has held that there is no risk of confusion between the word trade mark “Toro” (owned by Osborne Group, S.A., the notorious beverage company) and the word trade mark “Badtoro” (owned by Jordi Nogués, S.L., and filed for goods and services in classes 25 and 35 – relating to clothing-). Firstly,…
On 3. February 2017 the German Federal Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection presented a draft of an act to implement Directive (EU) 2015/2436 of the European Parliament and of the Council to approximate the laws of the Member States relating to trade marks (Gesetz zur Umsetzung der Richtlinie (EU) 2015/2436 des Europäischen Parlaments und des…
This morning at roughly 09:30 am the UK’s Supreme Court handed down their decision relating to whether Theresa May, the British Prime Minster, is constitutionally authorised to trigger art. 50. At roughly 09:35, a plethora of speculative dissections of the decision hit the media, to varying degrees of accuracy. As was covered in the previous…
When doing clearing searches for new trademarks, companies often find themselves facing one or several old trademark registrations that are subject to the use requirement and apparently not in use. Thus, they may consider bringing a cancellation action for non-use against the trademark(s) in question. Companies are sometimes hesitant to bring such actions because they…
Kluwer has finally released the second edition of its “European Trademark and Design Law” commentary, edited by the eminent Charles Gielen (known to many British practitioners from his expert witness role in the WAGAMAMA case), and the co-editor of this blog, Verena von Bomhard. This work appears as a series of short article by article…
Christmas is upon us! We have no idea where 2016 has gone, but to distract you from the turkey eating season the Kluwer Trademark team thought you could do with a Christmas quiz. Some of it requires knowledge, but not all so don’t worry! And you will be relieved to hear that there is no…
On September 23, 2016 the EU Commission published its Report on EU customs enforcement of intellectual property rights for 2015 – the annual publication of the result of customs actions at the EU external borders. As in previous years, the Report contains statistical information about the detentions made under customs procedures and includes data on…
There was not much about trademarks during this year’s AIPPI Congress, which was held from September 16 to 20 in Milan (see Panel Sessions and Study Questions). Most of the discussions were focused on such hot topics as the Unified Patent Court or Brexit (the latter of course involving some important trademark-related aspects) and one…
On July 5, 2016 the EU Commission published its “notice on the customs enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights concerning goods brought into the customs territory of the Union without being released for free circulation including goods in transit” (in short: “Transit Guidelines”). The document is a slightly delayed reaction to the recent changes in the…
