Ars Technica: "Is the term "google" too generic and therefore unworthy of its trademark protection? That's the question before the US Supreme Court. Words like teleprompter, thermos, hoover, aspirin, and videotape were once trademarked. They lost the status after their names became too generic and fell victim to what...

Engadget: "The Nintendo Switch certainly isn't the first gaming tablet, but is it directly riffing on others' ideas? Gamevice thinks so. The accessory maker is suing Nintendo for allegedly violating a patent for concepts used in the Wikipad, its gaming-oriented Android slate, as well as its namesake add-on controllers...

The Verge: "Disney will end its distribution deal with Netflix and launch its own streaming service, the company announced today. It intends to launch the service in 2019. Netflix won’t lose its Disney movies right away. Disney says it plans to cut Netflix off starting with the studio’s 2019 films, and Netflix says it...

(Courtesy of Ranee van der Straaten, BANNING and Monique Hennekens) Trade mark law - Judgement of the German Federal Patent Court (Bundespatentgericht) of 28 June 2017 in the case of Deutsche SiSi-Werke Betriebs GmbH v. Riha WeserGold Getränke GmbH & Co, concerning the Capri-Sun stand-up pouch (SiSi).

Trade Mark Law - The view of the General Court regarding the distinctiveness of an earlier mark is based on an error in law: it is clear from the brochures provided by Michelin that the stylised letter ‘x’ is used, in isolation or in combination with other letters, to designate a technical characteristic of Michelin...

Trade Mark Law - General Court made no error in law by holding that the Board of Appeal was fully entitled - after a global assessment - to conclude that there was no likelihood of confusion between the marks at issue. Other grounds of appeal are manifestly unfounded because they concern factual assessments of the...

Reuters: “A U.S. judge on Monday ordered Apple Inc to pay $506 million for infringing on a patent owned by the University of Wisconsin-Madison's patent licensing arm, more than doubling the damages initially imposed on Apple by a jury. […]

WARF sued Apple in 2014, alleging processors found in some versions of...

IP contract law - Zoom.in failed to sufficiently demonstrate that meetings its obligations towards MN, would lead to the demise of the company:  It can by no means be concluded that an agreement with YouTube, with the retention of the identity and independence of MN, could not be in agreement with the new YouTube...

Trade Mark Law - The fact that EU trade mark and national mark peacefully coexist in part of the European Union does not allow the conclusion that in another part of the European Union, where peaceful coexistence between that EU trade mark and the sign identical to that national mark is absent, there is no likelihood...

Trade Mark Law - Litigation - The A-G concludes that an action (seeking an order requiring the person formally registered as proprietor of a Benelux mark to make a declaration to the competent authority that he has no entitlement to the mark and that he waives registration as the proprietor of that mark) doesn’t fall...

Trade Mark Law - A trade mark such as LA MILLA DE ORO – which refers to a good or service with a high degree of value which is abundantly present in a single place – cannot constitute an indication of geographical origin. To indicate a geographical origin that sign must be accompanied by a name designating a...

In 2015, the so-called Tomato-II and Broccoli-II cases (G 2/12 and G 2/13) reached decisions from the Enlarged Board of Appeal. These decisions held that ‘plant products such as fruits, seeds and parts of plants are patentable even if they are obtained through essentially biological breeding methods involving crossing...

From the press release: "Munich, 29 June 2017 -- On a proposal of the European Patent Office its Administrative Council took a decision to amend the relevant Regulations in order to exclude from patentability plants and animals exclusively obtained by an essentially biological breeding process.

Trade mark law - Free speech - The disparagement clause violates the First Amendment’s Free Speech Clause: the disparagement clause reaches any trademark that disparages any person, group, or institution, goes much further than necessary and is far too broad. The commercial market is well stocked with merchandise that...

Regulation (EU) 2017/1001 of 14 June 2017 on the European Union trade mark (codification) has been published in the Official Journal of the European Union on 16 June 2017.

Sales Descriptions - Purely plant based products may not be marketed under terms as ‘milk’ and other designations that are reserved exclusively for milk products by Regulation No 1308/2013: even if those terms are expanded upon by clarifying or descriptive terms indicating the plant origin of the product at issue...

Plant Variety Rights - General Court erred in law in the finding that Article 23(1) of the implementing regulation did not grant the President of the CPVO the power to insert, on completion of the technical examination of a variety, a new characteristic in respect of that variety: an application for a Community plant...

Copyright - The making available and management of an online sharing platform such as The Pirate Bay that offers an index classifying protected works and a search engine that allows users of that platform to locate those works and to share them in the context of a peer-to-peer network is a “communication to the public”...

The German Constitutional Court has asked the German legislator to put the implementation of the UPC on hold. The reason of this request, according to the German media, is a constitutional complaint by an unnamed private person.
 

Trade Mark Law - The use of an individual EU trade mark as a label of quality is not a genuine use. An individual trade mark cannot be declared invalid, on the basis of Article 52(1)(a) and Article 7(1)(g), because the proprietor of the mark fails to ensure, by carrying out periodic quality controls at its licensees...