Search results for

Peter Ollier, Hong Kong and Emma Barraclough, London

Emma Barraclough, London

James Nurton, Munich

When contemplating the expansion of a brand into the United States marketplace, foreign trade mark owners often want to take advantage of the panache and elegance that American consumers typically associate with foreign locations. In order to maintain the commercial impression of a particular brand with a foreign manufacturer, brand owners often create a new composite mark that combines their brand with a geographic designation such as "Milan", "Paris" or "London". These geographic references may help establish consumer association for the brand and may help distinguish the brand from third party marks.

The Verified Rights Owner Programme (VeRO) is eBay's attempt to win over disgruntled rights owners. It provides them with an alternative to suing eBay when they find allegedly infringing goods offered for sale or auction on its site. Participants in the VeRO programme instead send eBay a Notice of Infringement form, specifying the allegedly infringing listing and identifying the trade mark, copyright, patent or registered design right which is said to be infringed. eBay will then remove the offending listing. So far so good for the rights owners. Unfortunately for them however a recent decision has held that such Notices of Infringement can constitute groundless threats of infringement. This can leave rights owners open to injunction applications to restrain such threats and claims for damages. Rights owners should therefore think carefully before making use of the VeRO programme.

The Commercial Court of Lisbon, the main Portuguese court dealing with patent matters, has recently handed down a decision, backed up after appeal by the Appeal Court of Lisbon, that is a serious warning about the quality of translations filed for the validation of European patents as a literal interpretation of bad translated claims can affect the scope of the protection.

It is not sufficient only to register a trade mark in Turkey but also use it in the Turkish market.

In Sweden, universities and other higher education institutions (HEIs) are classed as government agencies, and their main task as stipulated by law is to contribute to research and education. Like all Swedish government agencies, HEIs must abide by the Principle of Public Access to Official Documents. The conflict of interest between, on one hand, the need for increased commercialization of research results and therefore keeping certain results confidential to fulfil the novelty requirement in patent law and, on the other hand, the ambition to promote free research, and the publication of research results becomes obvious. How can this conflict be resolved?

Many companies make large investments in R&D and marketing that result in intangible investments. However, although most companies have well-defined models for running projects and making purchasing and product development decisions, they often have only vague methods for valuing their intangible assets.

Under the Singapore Trade Marks Act, a trade mark application may be opposed on the ground that it is made in bad faith. The question is, when does bad faith arise, and are there any steps an applicant can take to prevent his mark from being refused on this ground? In a recent High Court case, the issue of bad faith was discussed at some length.