Parody, in its utmost simplistic notion, has been an integral part of society and social relationships. The southern European countries, such as Portugal, have long embraced the notion of parody and accepted satire and irony in the context of arts. The parody has, however, evolved to new sectors of society and, in particular, to the…
The facts of the case litigated between Gulf Oil Benelux and Milan Vondal before the Prague High Courts prima facie appear to be a typical scenario of a domain name dispute. Yet, the owner of an earlier word mark failed to recover the domain name gulf.cz from his former exclusive distributor despite the domain name…
All conversation (about trade marks at least) in the UK relates to Brexit at the moment. A lot has been written when in all honesty there is very little to say. Verena’s post on 28th June is excellent – the only thing I would add is that whilst I am sure that no current EUTM…
A recent decision of the Danish Trademark and Patent Office (hereafter DKPTO) shows the narrow scope of protection of company names under Danish law. It is possible to base an opposition before EUIPO on Article 8 (4) EUTMR which include 1) non-registered trademarks and 2) other signs used in the course of trade. Other signs…
Early in the morning of the 24 June 2016 it was announced that, by a slim majority of 51.9% to 48.1% of the participating voters, the decision had been taken for the UK to leave the EU. While not legally binding on the UK government, this decision is politically binding and at this time clearly…
Kosovo PTO requires an original PoA for every filing, as of a couple of weeks ago. One would have to dispose of an unlimited number of PoAs signed in advance in order to make effective filings without delay. Also, this practice took immediate effect and delayed all new filings, since no one was prepared for…
Weapon of Choice: Protection of Names under Civil Law Before German courts, the best weapon against bothersome domain name registrations is not trademark law, but civil law. Sec. 12 of the German Civil Code (BGB) states quite broadly that the bearer of a name can keep others from using that name if such use compromised…
The Higher District Court of Düsseldorf had to decide whether the parallel importer of medical devices also had to provide the trademark owner at its request with a specimen of the re-labelled product. In its detailed decision of 12 April 2016 on case I-20 U 48/15 the court held that medical devices were rather more…
There is no official fee for requesting expedited proceedings. A request must be filed at the same time as filing the notice of appeal together with its statement of grounds or, for respondents, when filing their observations in reply. The request must be submitted in writing, as part of a separate document with detailed reasoning…
A decision from the Intellectual Property and Enterprise Court (“IPEC”) in Skyscape Cloud Services Limited v Sky PLC & ors [2016] EWHC 1340 (IPEC) has confirmed the continued dominance by Sky against entities incorporating their core mark, ‘SKY’. The case provides useful guidance on drafting declarations of non-infringement and has some interesting discussion on defining…
