In a recent communication, the organisations that represent the main UK IP professions have jointly reached out to the UK Department for Exiting the European Union with a series of recommendations. Essentially, the purpose of the communication was to list concisely the key areas of IP-related concern for rights holders and those who practise in…
On imitation marketing and locally limited likelihood of confusion between the product get-up of “Mozartkugel” confectionery. The city of Salzburg is not only the birthplace of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, but also home to one of Austria’s most famous sweets, the „(Salzburger) Mozartkugeln”. The Austrian Supreme Court (“OGH”) recently decided in a conflict between two…
This case has gone through all instances in the Norwegian court system, with the Norwegian Supreme Court rendering its first decision on colour marks in December 2017. Overall, the courts find that neither purple, nor specific shades of purple, have protection as unregistered trade marks for inhalers for GlaxoSmithKline in Norway. In 1999 GlaxoSmithKline (GSK)…
On 6th December 2017, the ECJ issued its judgement in the matter Coty / Akzente. The judgement is essentially about three questions: 1) Does the luxurious nature of products or trademarks justify a selective distribution system or did the Pierre Fabre judgement of 2011 put an end to that justification? 2) Does a selective distribution…
The Court of Florence last October 25, 2017 issued a decision prohibiting a travel agency to commercially use the image of Michelangelo’s David without the authorization of the “Galleria dell’Accademia”, (Galleria) the museum where the sculpture is located. The decision came after the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism (the “Ministry”) under…
Caspian Pizza v Shah [2017] EWCA Civ 1874 When two pizza businesses (previously each party to a franchise agreement) recently went head to head over the right to use the name CASPIAN, the outcome was far from what the claimant had expected. Not only were the proceedings brought against the defendant for trade…
Already, back in 1983 the Danish Government decided to create a national debit card named ‘DanKort’. Today the DanKort is usually combined with a Visa card and functions as a credit card abroad. The right to issue DanKort currently belongs to Nets Denmark A/S (‘Nets’), and the DanKort-logo is protected as a trademark and looks…
Three recent General Court judgments concerning oppositions between trademark in the pharmaceutical and cosmetic fields have caught our attention. In all three cases, the marks were found similar essentially on account of common rather descriptive elements. MUNDIPHARMA/MULTIPHARMA – T-144/16 of 7 November 2017: the EUTM application MULTIPHARMA in classes 5, 35, 42 was refused based…
On 5th December the European Commission and the EUIPO issued this notice to EUTM and RCD applicants and owners. It is a stark spelling out of what will happen on the date of withdrawal of the UK from the EU – 30 March 2019 – if there is no agreement on the issue of EUTMs…
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 September, October and November. Top 3 Kluwer Copyright…
