Whether use of a trade mark in just one Member State is sufficient or not to support the validity of a CTM is an issue practitioners and Courts have struggled with since the CTM system began. The issue was addressed by the CJEU in their decision in ONEL back in 2012. Yet MINT, one of the first UK IPO…

The European trademark package published in the EU Official Journal on 24 December 2015 brings numerous amendments of the EU Trademark Regulation and EU Trademark Directive. From the point of view of Czech and Slovak Industrial Property Offices, the reform package will result in a major procedural novelty consisting in the applicant’s right to require…

The General Court has upheld OHIM’s Board of Appeal in rejecting an opposition in which the shared element in the respective marks – PURE – was descriptive for the goods in question. This serves as a reminder of the difficulty of asserting rights on the basis of prominent descriptive elements within figurative or complex trade…