On July 05, 2016, the General Court confirmed the decisions of the invalidity department and the Boards of Appeal of the EUIPO and decided that the EU word mark “NEUSCHWANSTEIN”, registered by the Free State of Bavaria for goods and services in various classes remains registered since the trademark neither consists exclusively of an indication…
Slep-Tone Entertainment Corp. and its successor in interest, Phoenix Entertainment Partners LLC (collectively, “Slep-Tone”), failed to plausibly allege consumer confusion in its trademark infringement and unfair competition claims against an Illinois pub and its owner, who allegedly made unauthorized copies of Slep-Tone’s karaoke files and passed them off as genuine Slep-Tone tracks, the U.S. Court…
According to a recent decision of the Italian Supreme Court, it is no longer possible for an original name ‘proprietor’ to use his or her personal name as a distinctive sign once it has been validly registered as a word mark and has acquired a reputation if it has been validly transferred to a third…
On July 5, 2016 the EU Commission published its “notice on the customs enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights concerning goods brought into the customs territory of the Union without being released for free circulation including goods in transit” (in short: “Transit Guidelines”). The document is a slightly delayed reaction to the recent changes in the…
Company A has rights to the tradename “IST” since 2003, and an Austrian trademark “iST” (fig), with a priority of 2011. Company B also has rights to the trade name “IST”, since 2009. Can Company A successfully defend its trademark against a cancellation action of Company B, based on the (prior) tradename? The Austrian Courts say…
The legal concept of exhaustion of the rights conferred by a trade mark was transposed to the Portuguese Industrial Property Code following the approval of Directive 89/104/CEE of 21.12.88. The provision concerning the exhaustion of rights was updated in 2003 with the approval of the new Portuguese Industrial Property Code, as per article 259º, no….
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…
