The district court’s attorney fee award was reasonable and did not violate First Amendment freedom of speech. In a trademark infringement case between two civic organizations that promote political candidates in Louisiana, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed a judgment by the district court awarding over $148,000 in attorney fees. In…
According to the German Federal Supreme Court’s decision of 29 July 2021 (Case I ZR 139/20) the gold-colored foil of Lindt’s chocolate bunny is protected by a trademark acquired through use. The Court lifted the decision of the Higher District Court Munich which had rejected an infringement action against a competing product denying trademark protection…
The summary judgment finding by the district court which rejected an air mattress company’s theory of initial-interest confusion and the accompanying jury instruction that a likelihood of confusion must exist at the time of purchase to support a trademark infringement claim was erroneous. In a suit by bedding manufacturer Select Comfort against a competitor for…
The Brexit transition period has come and gone, and we are now almost 8 months into our post-EU life. One thing we can all agree on is that the way we work and the processes we use have been hit fairly hard. It will come as no surprise that the governmental bodies dealing with the…
In its TARGET VENTURES decision of 28 October 2020 (T-273/19), the General Court stated that there could be bad faith when there were objective indicia of a dishonest intention of the trademark owner, not necessarily linked to causing damage to a third party, when it seeks to obtain an abusive exclusive right. The case is…
In granting summary judgment, the district court incorrectly assumed that “actual use” of unregistered service mark requires actual sales and revenue generation. A federal district court applied an incorrect legal standard for “actual use” by plaintiff Erik M. Underwood of his unregistered service mark E.R.I.C.A., the Tenth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in Denver has…
In a recent case, the German Federal Patent Court had to deal with an interesting phenomenon among word marks called “disemvoweling”, a wordplay whereby the vowels of a word or text are removed (German Federal Patent Court, Dec. of Feb. 1, 2021 – 26 W (pat) 576/18). In this context, the word mark “Cndy Brz”…
On 18 May 2021, the Polish Supreme Court issued a much awaited ruling to resolve doubts concerning the national limitation period of non-pecuniary claims in trademark matters. The resolution was adopted in the context of an infringement case of the frontline EU trade mark (EUTM) owned by Audi AG (see below). The Supreme Court’s resolution…
The German Federal Court of Justice (“BGH”) held in its decision “Papierspender” (“Paper Dispenser”) that a Community design was not automatically caught by the functionality provision of the Community Design Regulation because it had appeared in a patent application. The decision highlights the importance for product developers to keep detailed records, already during product development,…
Any entity operating a fantasy sports platform would wish to display names of players and teams, for ease of identification and to make the platform as realistic as possible. Player or team names, however, where they act as source identifiers, would fall within the definition of a trademark, and their proprietors could enforce their rights…
