International infringers are notoriously difficult litigants to get in touch with; all too often the methods of service routinely available in the United States to serve defendants and bring them into court to halt infringement fail when exported overseas. The defendants in these cases often have little incentive to cooperate with either the court or whatever physical mechanism or service might be available in their jurisdiction ...
With international marketers readying for the upcoming FIFA World Cup, the Global Advertising Lawyers Alliance (GALA) has released Ambush Marketing: A Global Legal Perspective, which summarizes laws and other rules governing ambush marketing in 52 countries around the world ...
If you like having options in obtaining patent rights faster, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) has been eager to please in the last decade. Expediting a patent application can be highly desirable since the average pendency from filing to issuance is about three years on average, and can be even longer in certain technology areas or if an appeal to the Patent Trial & Appeal Board is required ...
Our clients from outside the province of Quebec often ask us the following questions: what are the linguistic labelling requirements in Canada, and particularly Quebec? There are several statutes and regulations governing labelling in Quebec and Canada. The following is a summary of some of the major points relating to the use of the French language ...
In a surprise announcement on 21 March 2014, the Zambian government with immediate effect abolished exchange control regulations introduced in 2012 and 2013 in an attempt to halt the rapid devaluation of the Kwacha. When the Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD) came to power in Zambia in 1991, the new government’s priorities were the restoration of economic future growth and employment through liberalising the economy and allowing market forces a greater role ...
On 14 February 2014 the South African Department of Trade & Industry (DTI) gave notice of its intention to prohibit the use of a large number of European food and drinks names in terms of section 15 of the Merchandise Marks Act (MMA) - confusingly the notice also makes reference to section 13 of the MMA, a section that no longer exists ...
On May 4, 2014 the Commission for Compensation and Royalties of the Israeli Patent Authority (the "Commission") rendered a decision relating to an employee's request to receive royalties for service inventions (the "Decision"). The Decision reduces the uncertainty that had surrounded the nature of an employee’s right to receive royalties for service inventions, and provides important guidelines for examining employee royalty waivers in agreements between employers and employees ...
New Regulations Governing Consumer Claims and Language Use in Consumer Information The Croatian Consumer Protection Act has recently updated how customer claims are to be handled. The receipt of complaints must now be confirmed in writing without delay ...
The Federal Circuit today overruled a federal district judge and held that Oracle’s API computer source code qualifies for copyright protection, potentially breathing new life into Oracle’s billion-dollar lawsuit against Google. Oracle America, Inc. v. Google Inc., Case No. 13-1021 (Fed. Cir. May 9, 2014) ...
In a pair of unanimous decisions issued today, the United States Supreme Court has substantially lowered the bar for the prevailing party’s recovery of attorneys’ fees under § 285 of the Patent Act. 35 U.S.C. § 285 provides that a prevailing party may recover attorneys’ fees in an “exceptional case ...
On April 10, Deputy Attorney General James Cole, White House senior adviser Rand Beers, the head of the U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division and the chairwoman of the Federal Trade Commission announced the release of the antitrust agencies’ “Antitrust Policy Statement on Sharing of Cybersecurity Information ...
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*" ...
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”) ...
