©-LAW

  Can a sign representing an artwork be registered as a trade mark? Can trade mark registration be used to monopolize artworks? If so, can any such intention and behaviour be repressed? The answer to all these questions is in the affirmative, as  Pest Control  – a handling service acting on behalf of elusive artist  Banksy  – learned yesterday, when the Cancellation Division of the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO)  ordered  that its EU trade mark (EUTM) registration representing one of Banksy’s best known artworks, the  Flower Thrower , be declared invalid on the ground of bad faith. Background In 2014, Pest Control obtained the  registration  of the figurative mark represented below as an EUTM in relation to goods and services in classes 2, 9, 16, 18, 19, 24, 25, 27, 28, 41, and 42. In 2019, Full Colour applied to obtain a declaration of invalidity for all relevant goods/services on grounds of bad faith under Article 59(1)(b)  EUTMR   and also pursuant to Article 59

IPKat posts as evidence in court? Why not! Image credits: Riana Harvey Does the disclosure in court proceedings of a work protected by copyright or related rights amount to InfoSoc Directive ? Is the notion of ‘public’ in the right of communication/making available to the public in Article 3 therein to be intended in the same way as the notion of ‘public’ in the right of distribution in Article 4? How can copyright protection be reconciled with transparency obligations? a ‘communication to the public’ and/or a ‘distribution to the public’ within the meaning of the  These, in a nutshell, are the issues that the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) will have to address when it decides  BY , C-637/19 , a referral made by the Svea Court of Appeal, Patent and Market Court of Appeal, Stockholm, Sweden. This morning, Advocate General (AG) Hogan issued his  Opinion , in which he advised the Court to rule that the electronic transmission by a litigant or a party to proce