The New Year brought good news for Romanian intellectual property counselors. The Romanian State Office for Inventions and Trademarks (SOIT) introduced the trademark E-filing system ...
The rapid expansion of brands in the Chinese foreign market has problems relating to the protection of these arise and hence of their owners. The last amendment to the Trademark Law of China reflects one of the main problems that foreign companies often face in China which is "brand hijacking." The records of "bad faith" requested by the opportunists of fashion brands block applications for registration of trademarks by their rightful owners ...
In a landmark case in Australia that is a first of its kind (but undoubtedly will not be the last), damages have been awarded to New South Wales school teacher, Mrs Christine Mickle, for offensive and defamatory tweets and Facebook posts made by an ex-student of the school where she taught. The student, Andrew Farley, apparently held a grudge against Mrs Mickle for playing what he perceived as a role in the removal of his father from the position of head music teacher at the school ...
Jack Wills, the clothing company that markets itself as “outfitters to the gentry” has enjoyed recent success in its action against House of Fraser regarding the use of its logo. Jack Wills complained that the rights in its logo comprising a silhouette of a pheasant wearing a top hat and holding a cane had been infringed by House of Fraser’s use of a logo on its own Linea brand of casual clothing that comprised a profile of a pigeon wearing a top hat and bow-tie ...
On January 27, 2014, the parliamentary secretary of the Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs tabled five treaties in the House of Commons dealing with intellectual property, of which three relate to trademarks ...
The moniker "spam" for unsolicited and often indiscriminate electronic communications to multiple mailing lists, individuals, or newsgroups derives from a famous sketch in the British television comedy series Monty Python's Flying Circus. However, these days spam is no joke. It is a scourge on modern communications ...
Why Proportionality Should Be Considered As Part of the Preservation Parties have a general duty to preserve and produce relevant electronically stored information (ESI). This duty, however, is bounded by a proportionality requirement because e-discovery should not be allowed to be the tail that wags the dog. Courts and parties have been adept at applying proportionality requirements to the production of ESI, but they have struggled to apply proportionality to the preservation of ESI ...
In 2012 the Western Cape High Court handed down a trade mark judgement that raised eyebrows. The facts were that the owner of a farm called Zonquasdrift had a trade mark registration for the mark Zonquasdrift covering wine (but not grapes). The owner of another farm in the area sold wine grapes under its name, Zonquasdrif Vineyards (no ‘t’ at the end) ...
The authorities seem to have gone on the offensive on the issue of counterfeits. In the run-up to Christmas, the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) has called on South Africans not to buy counterfeit goods, even if they are cheaper than the originals (as they invariably are) ...
We’ve written about the new Generic Top Level Domains (gTLDs) on more than one occasion. This refers, of course, to the process whereby companies and organisations can register names – generic words, geographical names, brand names - as top level domain names. So, in the same way that there’s long been .com, .net and .info, you can now have .bank, .google and .capetown. Some 1900 applications have already been filed ...
These days, it seems as if every passing week brings with it a new story in the press about the legal risks of engaging with social media. We have heard much recently about the dangers of defamation on Twitter.Earlier this year, Sally Bercow learned to her cost just how easy it can be to libel someone without explicitly accusing them of anything, after sharing a message about Lord McAlpine with her Twitter followers: "Why is Lord McAlpine trending? *innocent face*" ...
Between 2007 and 2009 non-profit association Motor Sports Limes (MSL) hosted motocross races on a piece of land that it owned. It claimed to have taken all necessary safety precautions, including marking and securing circuit, for the races and associated events held there. According to MSL, only accredited photographers had to sign a contract with MSL, which included a clause stating that no commercial use of photos taken at the races could be made without MSL's prior consent ...
In a highly-anticipated and extremely significant pair of decisions for businesses and consumers alike, the Supreme Court of Canada (“SCC”) ruled on Thursday (October 31, 2013) that the ultimate consumers at the end of a supply chain can effectively leap-frog the supply chain by having direct legal recourse in a class action against a manufacturer who illegally overcharged for the product supplied ...
On October 25, 2013, the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress of the People’s Republic of China passed an amendment to the P.R.C. Law on the Protection of Consumer Rights and Interests (the “Amendment”) ...
On October 22, 2013, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (“NIST”) issued the Preliminary Cybersecurity Framework (the “Preliminary Framework”), as required under Section 7 of the Obama Administration’s February 2013 executive order, Improving Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity (the “Executive Order”). The Preliminary Framework includes standards, procedures and processes for reducing cyber risks to critical infrastructure ...
The European Court of Human Rights (the ECHR), in Delfi AS v Estonia, has upheld unanimously a finding of liability against an Internet news portal regarding offensive comments that were posted online by one of its readers. The ECHR held that making Delfi AS liable for the comments was a justified and proportionate interference with its right to freedom of expression and that there was no violation of Article 10 (freedom of expression) of the European Convention on Human Rights (the Convention) ...
To the average internet user the few little letters at the end of the domain name they have just searched must seem rather trivial. Little do they know of the struggle of numerous corporations to obtain those little letters in an effort to try to stamp their individuality on the internet. Companies such as "donut.com" (who focus on registering as many as these generic top level domains or gTLDs as possible) insist that "the current Internet namespace, like ...
With the publication of Law no.74/2013 of 6 September a Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) was created in Portugal. The law will come into force 90 days after the setting up of the CAS, which will be based at the Portuguese Olympic Committee (POC). In an official communication dated 13 September the POC has already announced that it will respond positively to the mandate conferred on it to set up the CAS ...
SUMMARY: 1. Principles of Belgian Sports justice – 2. The relationship between ordinary justice and Sports justice – 3. The relevant NOC regulations and NOC judicial body – 4. The relevant football regulations and RBFA judicial bodies – 5. Other sports judicial bodies – 6. Clubs’ and players’ rights and obligations – 7. Dispute settlement – 8. ADR and interim relief – Conclusion Abstract:This article aims at providing an overview of sports justice in Belgium ...
On 25 January 2012, the European Commission decided that a substantial overhaul of data protection regulation is required and issued its proposals for change. The proposals are currently making their way through the legislative process in Brussels but, once approved, are expected to take effect at some point in 2014 ...
Use of a domain name: is it a form of advertising? Following the decision in Case C-657/11 (Belgian Electronic Sorting Technology BV v Bert Peelaers, Visys NV), the rules of fairness imposed by European Directives 84/450 and 2006/114 on misleading and comparative advertising will extend to cover not just the content of a web site, but the domain name at which it is registered as well. See our commentary here ...
Under EU Directive 2001/29 on the harmonisation of copyright law, Member States grant authors, performers, producers and broadcasting organisations exclusive rights to authorise or prohibit reproductions of their own works ...
Businesses in the UK have for some time been subject to strict rules on misleading advertising, contained in the Business Protection from Misleading Marketing Regulations 2008 (the “BPRs”) ...
The High Court has ruled in favour of pop star Rihanna against high street clothes retailer Topshop, which used an unauthorised image of her (almost identical to one used on her CD) on some of its T-shirts.Customers had believed it was an approved image, so the High Court confirmed Topshop was guilty of passing off ...
Personal data regulation is a recently developed topic in the legal realm. In 1970, the first laws on the matter were issued in Europe and North America. Specifically, the first data protection law called the Bundesdatenschutzgesetz was issued in Germany on October 7, 1970, and the same year the United States Congress issued the Fair Credit Reporting Act, which controls the collection, use and redistribution of any consumer information ...
