©-LAW

  A week ago, The IPKat   reported and commented   on the important   decision   of the Grand Chamber of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in   VG Bild-Kunst , C-392/19.  In that judgment, the CJEU admitted the possibility for rightholders to restrict linking  by contract , provided that any such restrictions are imposed and/or implemented through the adoption of effective technological measures, in accordance with Article 6(1) and (3) of the  InfoSoc Directive . According to the CJEU, this requirement - which, as I wrote, might raise questions of compatibility with the no formalities rule in the  Berne Convention  - is prompted by the need to "ensure legal certainty and the smooth functioning of the internet". Readers may be aware that, over the past few years, I have developed IP and study aid materials (they can all be accessed  here ) primarily aimed at my students. Among them, there was a table - first publ...

UniKat: Working hard ... not to fall asleep Several students are currently busy choosing or will shortly choose topics to develop in the context of their own university theses and dissertations, including at the LLM/master level and in the context of PhD proposals/early stages of their PhDs. Often, students have to submit a ‘Proposal’, which tackles how they intend to develop their work . The allowed word count for a thesis/dissertation varies: it is approximately somewhere between 15,000 and 25,000 words for an LLM dissertation and 75,000-100,000 words for a PhD.  The funny thing about LLM/PhD proposals is that one is expected to know what they are going to write about  before  they have done all the required research and actually know what needs to be written about. Several books and articles have been written on how to develop a good piece of academic research, whether as a student or as a professional researcher.  However...

Is trade mark law difficult?  Usually, the response that one gets (with a serious/defeated tone) when asking this question is: "Yes because of the Court of Justice of the European Union that has added all those trade mark functions". But apparently trade mark law is difficult in general, and many students (undergraduate law students I have at Southampton) confess that they find it challenging to get an idea of what, in general and at the very outset, the "life" of a trade mark law may be about. I thus thought of preparing a conceptual map that could help my students get a clearer picture of what events may occur in the life of a national EU trade mark, starting from the notion of "sign" to registration and anything after that, ie infringement, invalidity, revocation, etc. The map is of course a general one, and any feedback from IPKat readers on how to improve it is very welcome! *** * Vd Article  3 of  Directive 2015/243...