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…
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…
