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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 ...

Earlier today, the General Court (GC) issued a  keenly-awaited ruling  (T‑307/17), in which it upheld the earlier decision of the EUIPO Second Board of Appeal (R 1515/2016-2), and found this three-stripe EU trade mark (EUTM) owned by adidas: invalid. In a nutshell, the GC found that: The trade mark at issue would not be a pattern mark, but an ordinary figurative mark;  The forms of use, eg colour scheme, of said trade mark should not to be taken into account; and  adidas failed to prove acquired distinctiveness throughout the EU. Let's see more in detail how the court reasoned. Background In 2014. adidas obtained an EUTM for the sign represented above, described as consisting of "three parallel equidistant stripes of identical width, applied on the product in any direction" for goods in Class 25 of the Nice Agreement. Also that year, Shoe Branding Europe filed an application for a declaration of invalidity of the EUTM pursu...

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...