A recent Supreme Court judgement in the Dalí case shows clear respect for trademarks but raises some questions regarding image. A great many brands have used in their advertising campaigns the images of people who, despite no longer being alive, continue to have considerable selling power. There are even marketing studies which show that advertising…
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 August and September. Top 3 Kluwer Copyright Blog…
In a decision of June 2, 2016 Svea Court of Appeal found Mars’ popular product “m&m’s” infringing Kraft Foods Sverige Intellectual Property AB’s non-registered trademark “m” in relation to candy and chocolates. Mars’ sales of products bearing the trademarks “m” and “m&m’s” were therefore prohibited in Sweden under the penalty of a fine of SEK…
A federal district court properly found that plaintiff Three Rivers Confections (TRC) owned the word marks FUDGETOPIA and FUDGIE WUDGIE through a lawful transfer by non-party Fudgie Wudgie L.P. (FWLP), the U.S. Court of Appeals in Philadelphia has ruled. The district court’s summary judgment ruling in favor of Three Rivers Confections was therefore affirmed (Three…
In March 2016, the UKIPO refused registration of the mark A DOG IS FOR LIFE NOT JUST FOR CHRISTMAS in its entirety on the grounds that it would merely be seen as a non-distinctive inspirational and promotional strap line. The applicant (the Dogs Trust charity) argued that the mark had already been successfully registered in…
On September 23, 2016 the EU Commission published its Report on EU customs enforcement of intellectual property rights for 2015 – the annual publication of the result of customs actions at the EU external borders. As in previous years, the Report contains statistical information about the detentions made under customs procedures and includes data on…
There was not much about trademarks during this year’s AIPPI Congress, which was held from September 16 to 20 in Milan (see Panel Sessions and Study Questions). Most of the discussions were focused on such hot topics as the Unified Patent Court or Brexit (the latter of course involving some important trademark-related aspects) and one…
Royal Copenhagen, the Danish porcelain company, claimed infringement by Porsgrund AS (hereafter Porsgrund) as it considered the Norwegian porcelain dinner service company’s dinner service sets called ‘MaxiStrå blå’ to constitute a violation of Royal Copenhagen’s rights to the porcelain dinner service sets called ‘Blue Fluted Mega’. Royal Copenhagen claimed infringement under the Danish Trademark Act,…
On 15 July 2016 the PI judge in the District Court in The Hague, the Netherlands, rendered a decision in a banana case between competitors Chiquita and Fyffes International about a recently introduced new brand of Chiquita. The decision confirmed that descriptive elements cannot automatically be disregarded if these elements form a conceptual whole with…
CJEU: reimbursement of legal costs in IP infringement proceedings must not be disproportionate or even insignificant On 28 July 2016, the CJEU ruled in a case concerning the reimbursement of legal costs in a patent infringement action in Belgium (United Video Properties Inc. v. Telenet NV, C‑57/15). It declared that a flat fee reimbursement system,…
