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Can the word EU trade mark (EUTM) 'BIG MAC' owned by McDonald's be revoked for non-use? The answer is 'yes'. The EUIPO Cancellation Division  provided  it further to an application for revocation filed by Irish company Supermac (Cancellation No 14 788 C). What happened? McDonald's is (or, rather, was) the owner of the word mark 'BIG MAC' for the following goods and services in Classes 29, 30 and 42 of the Nice Classification: Supermac filed an application under Article 58(1)(a) of the  EU Trade Mark Regulation , requesting the revocation - in its entirety - of 'BIG MAC', on grounds that the mark would have not been put to genuine use for a continuous period of 5 years. In response to the application, McDonald's submitted evidence that 'BIC MAC' would be in use in a number of Member States, including in advertising and on the packaging of relevant products.  The applicant noted that t

Volker Beck  (photo by Mathias Schindler CC-BY-SA) After the late 2018 Opinions in  Funke Medien  [ here ]  and  Pelham   [ here ] , yesterday Advocate General Maciej (AG) Szpunar -  IPKat's copyright person of the year 2018  - issued his  Opinion  in  Spiegel Online , C-516/17   [background  here ] , the third German referral asking the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) to weigh in on, among other things, the interplay between copyright and other fundamental rights. The Opinion, which is not yet available in English, advises the CJEU to rule that, among other things: The exception within Article 5(3)(d) of the  InfoSoc Directive  requires one to consider the purpose of the quotation at issue, and  Fundamental rights like freedom of expression do not allow EU Member States to go beyond the catalogue of exceptions in Article 5 therein to envisage new exceptions or even introduce a general fair use clause. Background As readers might rem

The Cartier's LOVE trade mark "Can anyone have a monopoly over love?" This is an interesting and deep question ... and  perhaps  even more so in a trade mark context, as the Singapore IP Office recently discovered.  In a  decision  issued on 20 December last, this IP Office had to consider this very question in the context of an opposition filed by Cartier:  More precisely, can a trader prevent other traders from registering a trade mark which includes the word “LOVE” for use on jewellery?  Cartier filed an opposition, relying on its earlier 'LOVE' figurative trade mark (in which the O is replaced with the device of Cartier's iconic slotted screw head e the E is in lower case) for,  inter alia , jewellery. The opposition related to MoneyMax Jewellery's application to register the signs below as Singapore trade marks for jewellery in Class 14, and retail and other services relating to jewellery in Class 35: The first C