Part 1 of this year’s retrospective provided a general overview over the GC case law from 2023 with numbers and a special focus on genuine use cases. Part 2 now focuses on weak marks. The reader is asked for forgiveness for the unusual length of this post… On social media (in particular LinkedIn), one could…
The year is ending and so it is time, once again, to look at what has been coming out of the General Court (GC) over the past 12 months. While the numbers here are only approximate, resulting from searches on the Curia website and on Darts-ip, they do give an idea of what the GC…
In October 2023, the Danish Supreme Court ruled in a trademark case concerning the trademark “TREK”. In recent years the Danish Supreme Court has rarely dealt with trademark disputes (due to the relatively strict requirements of leave from the Appeals Permission Board to appeal a decision to the Supreme Court), making this case particularly interesting….
Whether referred to as image rights, personality rights, right of publicity, portrait rights or simply likeness, having control over the use of your “image” can be an important right that – in one way or another and to various degrees – is respected in most jurisdictions. This is particularly true for persons whose image has…
The parodist could not rely on First Amendment protection because it used the famous sneakers as a source identifier. The maker of a sneaker that parodied a famous brand of skateboard-friendly kicks was not entitled to First Amendment protection against a claim of trademark infringement because it used the trade dress of the original as…
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 most-read posts from each of our IP law blogs. Here are the most popular posts over the past few months. Top 3 Kluwer Copyright…
A recent decision by the General Court deals with the weight of figurative elements in the overall impression of a sign. Facts The applicant applied for the registration of the following sign as an EU trademark for ‘publication of printed matter for advertising purposes’ (class 35) and for ‘entertainment services’ in class 41: The intervener…
All trademark news that you might have missed last month in one convenient overview. Read up on the latest news reported by the Kluwer IP Reporter. Angola joins DESIGNclass and expands TMClass coverage On 30 October, 2023, the National Institute of Industrial Property of Angola (IAPI-AO) joined DESIGNclass, the biggest database for product indications, and…
Many of us who have done a PhD, remember that time around the beginning of the second year when anxiety and insecurity start substituting the passion and enthusiasm. We all needed a safe space and a friendly encouraging forum to reassure us that having your own research project is a worthwhile endeavour. To help inspire junior…
The marks are generic both as to “Carnival” and the geographic locations “St Thomas” and “Virgin Islands.” The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit affirmed a lower court decision denying the Virgin Island Carnival Committee (“VICC”) preliminary injunction to enjoin the Virgin Island Department of Tourism from using the phrases “St. Thomas Carnival”…
