Trade Mark Law: in the Securvita case, there is no general rule for assessing the ancillary nature of a sequence of letters which reproduces the first letter of each of the words in the word combination with which it is juxtaposed. The relevant public’s perception varies according to whether what is being assessed is...

Trade Mark Law - General court applied right criterion to establish likelihood of confusion between the sign ‘SÔ:UNIC’ and the family of marks beginning with ‘SO…?’

Media Law: videos of short duration under the subdomain of a website of a newspaper can be covered by the concept of program as laid down in the Audiovisual Media Services Directive. Principal purpose of a service making videos available offered in the electronic version of a newspaper depends upon whether that service...

Personal Data: existence of a decision adopted by the Commission that a third country ensures an adequate level of protection does not prevent a supervisory authority of a Member State from examination.
Decision of Commission that the USA ensures an adequate level of protection of transferred personal data (Safe...

Patent law. The ‘date of the first authorisation to place the product on the market in the European Union’ of Article 13(1) SPC Regulation is determined by EU law. The ‘date of the first authorisation to place the product on the market in the European Union’ is the date on which notification of the decisions granting...

Trade Mark Law - For the annulment of a shape it has to be covered by one or more grounds of refusal. Exclusion of a for a technical result necessary shape of goods, must be interpreted as referring only to the manner in which the goods are manufactured. Integration: applicant must prove that the relevant class of...

Trade Mark Law - Mark with reputation of earlier Community mark: must have reputation in substantial part of the EU, may coincide with territory of single Member State. Criteria concerning genuine use are not relevant in order to establish the existence of a ‘reputation’. Proprietor of the earlier Community trade mark...

Trade Mark Law - Inconsistency in the arguments of the appellant: the General Court cannot be criticized for not having applied the case-law arising out of the judgment in T.I.M.E. ART v OHIM, because of the inconsistency in the appellant’s arguments

Patent Law - Abuse of a Dominant Position: FRAND-patent holder does not abuse a dominant position to pursue infringement proceedings if he alerted the alleged infringer of the infringement, presented a specific, written offer for a licence on FRAND terms and the infringers continues to use the patent in question. Not...

Litigation -  Article 8(3)(e) of Directive must be interpreted as precluding a national provision, which allows, in an unlimited and unconditional manner, a banking institution to invoke banking secrecy in order to refuse to provide, information concerning the name and address of an account holder

Trade Mark Law - Economic operator who is importing without the consent of the proprietor and placing those goods under duty suspension arrangement must be classified as ‘using in the course of trade any sign which is identical with the trade mark in relation to goods. The proprietor of a trade mark may oppose...

Litigation - Private International Law -  Trade Mark Law - Not recognising a judgment contrary to EU law can not be justified on the grounds that it infringes public policy in a Member State, where the error of law relied on does not constitute a manifest breach of a rule of law regarded as essential in the EU legal...

Plant Variety - in order to be able to benefit from the derogation from the obligation to obtain the authorization of the holder of the plant variety right, the right holder is required to pay the equitable remuneration, no later than 30 June following the date of reseeding

Trade Mark Law - Likelihood of Confusion: in the assessment of the likelihood of confusion between marks with Arabic words, the definition and pronunciation should be considered if the relevant public has knowledge of written Arabic.

Freedom of Expression - Delfi’s liability for hateful comments posted by third parties no breach of Article 10 ECHR. The Court takes into account that the news portal was professionally managed, that Delfi did not take sufficient measures to remove the comments and that only a moderate sanction had been imposed on the...

Unfair Commercial Practices - It has to be assumed that consumers read the list of ingredients of the product before purchase.The presence of a list of ingredients does not in itself exclude the possibility that the labelling is misleading. Directive 2000/13 precludes misleading labelling, even though the actual...

Copyright - the exclusive rights of broadcasting organizations as referred to in Article 3(2)(d) of the Copyright Directive can be expanded to live sports events on the internet, if it does not affect the protection of copyright.

Plant Variety Rights - the General Court wrongly held that the principle of examination of the facts by the CPVO of its own motion also applies in proceedings before the Board of Appeal. No lead to the setting aside of the judgment: The General Court, non the less checked of the judgment under appeal whether the...

Trade Mark Law - purely descriptive element does not preclude from being acknowledged as dominant for the purposes of assessing the similarity of the signs at issue.

Copyright - a holder of an exclusive right to distribute is allowed to prohibit offers for sale or  targeted advertisement, even if it is not established that the advertisement gave rise to the purchase of that protected work by an EU buyer, in so far as that advertisement invited EU consumers to purchase it.