Are e-commerce websites allowed to sell products of companies engaged in direct selling? The Delhi High Court of India, in its judgment of 8 July 2019, here, held platforms such as Amazon, Flipkart, Snapdeal, 1MG and Healthkart guilty of tortious interference with the contractual relationship of the plaintiffs with their direct sellers. The court applied…
The USPTO properly refused to register ARTISAN NY for clothing because, like the registered mark ARTESANO NEW YORK CITY, the proposed mark conveyed the impression of clothing made by skilled tradespersons in New York. Substantial evidence supported the USPTO’s refusal to register the mark ARTISAN NY, for clothing, on likelihood of confusion grounds, the U.S….
For over five years, Canadian trademark practitioners have been preparing for Canada’s new trademark law. We have been advising clients, writing articles, attending seminars, reviewing new Regulations & Practice Notices, and updating our internal systems preparing for the most significant changes in one hundred and fifty years. After several delays, most sections of the new…
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 April, May and June. Top 3 Kluwer Copyright…
In a recent case decided by the Court of Venice (decision n. 2355/2018), MHCS, the producer, inter alia, of the famous Veuve Clicquot champagne, prevailed against a prosecco producer who used orange labels on its prosecco, based on its abstract colour mark “jaune orange” registered as an EUTM. However, absent proof of acquired distinctiveness for…
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…
Sufficient evidence at trial supported finding that trade dress of iconic French press coffeemaker was nonfunctional; verdict against rival upheld. Bodum USA, Inc. (Bodum), which produces and sells what is recognized as an iconically designed houseware product, the Chambord French press coffeemaker, met its burden of proving at trial that the elements of the claimed…
District court correctly held that trademark owner failed to raise genuine factual issue as to secondary meaning of the asserted mark. A federal district court correctly found that a non-profit corporation that promotes and helps run the annual Fiestas de le Calle San Sebastian festival in San Juan, Puerto Rico lacked evidence to sustain its…
Introduction Defendant Masking is a strategy used in India by plaintiffs in IPR suits to avoid detection of the matter in the Cause List by masking the ‘main defendant’ with the other defendants. The Cause List in Indian jurisprudence are schedules of cases to be heard by the courts on the following day(s). It gives…
We need all the help we can get to fight counterfeit goods. Counterfeit goods are produced and distributed by organised criminal groups and this crime represents as much as 2.5 per cent of world trade, or USD 461 billion. For more information see Europol’s webpage here: https://www.europol.europa.eu/crime-areas-and-trends/crime-areas/intellectual-property-crime/counterfeiting-and-product-piracy. A Danish researcher and associate professor, Thomas Just…
