Imagine you file an application for a figurative mark, and EUIPO publishes it. But then your application is opposed by a third party. So while you’re fighting that battle, you file just the word portion of your figurative mark and get a registration. You also file, two further figurative marks containing the same word mark,…
Reason prevailed: on 5 October 2020 (T-602/19), the General Court of the European Union granted the action of Eugène Perma France against the EUIPO and held that the marks NATURALIUM and NATURANOVE could not be considered confusingly similar only because both started in “NATURA”. Surprisingly, both the Opposition Division and the Fourth Board of Appeal…
It is not common that local Indian companies sue multinationals for infringement in India – and win. However, recently, just that happened: Parle Agro Pvt. Ltd. (“Parle ”) sued multinational retail giant Walmart India Pvt. Ltd. and Ors. (“Walmart India”) at the Bombay High Court for violating its trademark/trade-dress when it launched a deceptively similar…
Inspired by my co-blogger Agnieszka Sztoldman’s August post on Teva’s headache over slogan (EU) trade marks, and the mood-lifting granting of protection to the slogan “STIMMUNG HOCH ZWEI” in Austria (see details below), this is to provide an overview on the protection of slogans and taglines in recent Austrian case law. As any other trademarks,…
A manufacturer of chemically strengthened glass sold under the IONEX mark failed to show that Apple’s use of the term Ion-X to describe the glass on the Apple Watch was infringing. A manufacturer of chemically strengthened glass that is marketed under the registered trademark IONEX failed to show that a reasonable jury could find there…
The Court of Justice has said that reputation and enhanced distinctive character are not relevant to the assessment of similarity of the signs under Article 8(1)(b) of the Regulation and should only be considered in the assessment of likelihood of confusion. This is important because if the marks are not held to be similar, there…
There are still many IP professionals who are nostalgic of the “good old times” when instead of having to laboriously and meticulously identify the list of goods/services it was sufficient to simply indicate the “class heading” and et voilà you got protection for everything in the class. Yet, there were dangers lurking under this apparent…
Japanese confectionary company’s Pocky cookie stick’s shape was useful and not entitled to trade-dress protection. A functional design that is useful, even if it is not an essential feature of a product, is not entitled to trade-dress protection, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit determined, affirming dismissal of a trademark lawsuit filed…
At the end of August 2020, the Russian competition authority (the “FAS”) issued two important decisions aimed at allowing a non-authorized import of trademarked products into Russia (so-called “parallel import”). Specifically, the FAS said that two major automotive producers violated competition law by restricting the parallel import of their parts from outside Russia. These decisions…
As readers may recall, the General Court rendered a judgment around two years ago in the Asolo v Red Bull case (known under FLÜGEL – T-150/17 of 4 October 2018) ruling on similarity, or rather dissimilarity, between alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages. While the FLÜGEL case concerned specifically energy drinks vs. alcoholic drinks, the General Court…
