Retail

Absolutely Not Registrable As a Trade Mark Attorney, one of the questions I am asked on an almost daily basis is whether new marks are registrable. As UK IPO practice is forever evolving, it can be helpful to conduct regular reviews of the kinds of marks being refused by the UK IPO. We take a… Read more »

Monster trade mark appeal runs out of energy In joined cases T-758/20 and T-759/20, the General Court revoked EU trade mark registrations for the marks MONSTER and MONSTER ENERGY after Monster Energy Co failed to demonstrate that evidence of use of the mark on one product spanned two classes of goods. The cases concerned non-use… Read more »

Appeals to the Appointed Person in the UK – a RARE case of success relating to a missed counterstatement As discussed in previous reports – successful appeals before the Appointed Person in the UK are uncommon.   This successful appeal related to a failure by the proprietor of a registration to file a timely defence to… Read more »

3D marks – Shaping up for the New Year! The classic Volkswagen (VW) camper van is everywhere these days, its image adorning anything from clothing, tea towels and bedlinen to coffee mugs, fold out chairs and beach windbreaks.  Many a time the VW badge will be replaced with some other circular motif, often a peace… Read more »

Red letter day for Wordle – what next following its sale to The New York Times? News broke this week that viral online word game Wordle has been sold to The New York Times (NYT) for an undisclosed seven figure sum. The popularity of the free daily word puzzle has exploded in just a few… Read more »

Exhausted? You’re not alone…! What next for parallel imports after Brexit? This article was first written by our experts Ian Gill and Suzanne Power for PTMG’s Law Lore & Practice Newsletter   Background 1 January 2021 marked the start of a new era for the United Kingdom and European Union. On that date, some four… Read more »

Post Brexit – the final countdown … Don’t forget the 30 September 2021 deadline for filing comparable UK trade mark or design applications based on any EU trade marks or designs that were pending at the end of the Brexit transition period.  Since Brexit took effect this year, those rights will no longer cover the… Read more »

UK government faces challenges over future exhaustion of IP rights regime Brexit created ‘one way door’ policy for parallel imports, say AA Thornton partners Ian Gill and Dan Byrne This article was first posted by The Global Legal Post  as event coverage for Ian and Dan’s presentation ‘Exhaustion of rights’ for the Anti-counterfeiting World Summit…. Read more »

Using IP to effectively combat online celebrity endorsement scams As reported in the BBC recently, the National Cyber Security Centre (“NCSC”) has released its Active Cyber Defence Report for 2020. In that report it has stated that ‘celebrity endorsement scams’ are a relatively new type of scam in relation to which it has started performing takedowns…. Read more »

Ian Gill reports on how miniscule trademark use may be enough to support a passing off claim and maintain a EU trademark registration. This article was written by Ian for the IPKat legal blog Don’t be fooled: decision O/050/21 is not just another unsuccessful appeal to the UK Appointed Person (approximately 85% of such appeals are unsuccessful). Underlying… Read more »