United States

(Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory US)/ /Leave a comment

The maker of Gibson-brand guitars could not go forward with claims that media conglomerate Viacom International secondarily infringed trademarks related to Gibson’s “Flying V” design by selling a ukulele with a V-shaped body and bearing Viacom’s “SpongeBob SquarePants” and Nickelodeon trademarks, the U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco has held (Gibson Brands, Inc. v….

Case law, Infringement action

(CMS Rui Pena & Arnaut)/ /Leave a comment

The Portuguese market has been recently overrun by new brands and stores of “low-cost” perfumes. Their business relies on the idea of selling low-cost versions of the original perfumes, identified only by the olfactory families; the business model implicitly and explicitly presupposes that such perfumes are marketed as corresponding to the bestselling perfumes, in terms…

EUIPO, General Court

(BomhardIP)/ /Leave a comment

On 18 February 2016, the General Court issued its decision in the HARRY’S BAR case (T-711/13 and T-716-13), where, adopting a rather broad brush approach, it held that food and beverage products were similar – at least to a certain degree – to services of provision of food and drink in class 43. Harry’s New…

Case law, Figurative mark

(schmid-ip)/ /Leave a comment

The Austrian Supreme Court (short “the Court”) recently ruled that a provider of maintenance and repair services for cars of all brands (short “garage”), including Mazda cars, where that service provider is in no business relationship with the brand owner, may not use figurative marks to indicate its services, but only the word mark (decision…

Case law, Denmark

(Gorrissen Federspiel)/ /Leave a comment

In December 2015 the Danish Maritime and Commercial High Court granted a preliminary injunction against citations and the use of metatags in a remarkable case between Karnov (Thomson Publishing) and Schultz – two providers of online databases of Danish case law. The case is an example of how metatags used together with citations of case…

Infringement action, Preliminary ruling

(BomhardIP)/ /Leave a comment

The CJEU in its decision of 4 February 2016 in the ARKTIS case (C-163/15) followed the opinion of Advocate General Wathelet and confirmed that recordal of a license is not a necessary condition for the licensee to be able to bring an infringement action based on a CTM. In our last post (here) we commented…

Case law, EUTM, Germany, Keyword advertising

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The Higher District Court of Cologne held in preliminary injunction proceedings that use of a distinctive trademark on amazon.de for displaying other comparable products not originating from the trademark owner may be a trademark infringement (decision of 20 November 2015 on Case 6 U 40/15). The case concerned a practice of Amazon on its German…

Case law, Opposition, Sweden

(Cirio Law Firm)/ /Leave a comment

The Swedish Court of Patent Appeals invalidated the registration of BERGLÖFSLÅDAN and BERGLÖFSLÅDAN ORIGINAL (in English the “BERGLOF BOX”) based on bad faith because of the trademark proprietor’s knowledge of the common use of these terms by other parties in Sweden. The case concerns the Swedish trademark registrations BERGLÖFSLÅDAN and BERGLÖFSLÅDAN ORIGINAL (in English the “BERGLOF…