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The multi-member Civil Court of Athens recently issued an interesting judgment regarding the criteria when comparing composite trade marks covering pharmaceutical products and consisting of words and coloured devices. The dispute in question referred to a main lawsuit filed against a Greek company regarding infringement of the famous trademark Aspiring. The plaintiff claimed that the colour combination of green and white with black lettering is widely recognisable by consumers as an essential element of its Aspiring product marking and that this combination is associated with the plaintiff. The infringing product was a pharmaceutical product for the relief of pain, antipyretics and analgesic which circulated in the market in a packaging bearing the colours green and white with black lettering and under a different word mark.

When it comes to protecting new technologies, it may be difficult to decide between trade secret and patent protection.

Earlier this year, Singapore advanced in its quest to become an intellectual property hub in the ASEAN region with the appointment of the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (IPOS) as an International Authority in Patent Search and Examination, specifically as an International Searching Authority (ISA), and International Preliminary Examining Authority (IPEA) under the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT). This marked IPOS as the first IP office to receive ISA/IPEA recognition by the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) within the ASEAN region.

In Dutch court practice, an appeal is of a devolutive nature, that is in appeal the case is reconsidered as a whole. However, in a recent interlocutory decision (November 3 2015, High Point v KPN), the Appeal Court in The Hague found that the patentee was not entitled to further limit his claims.

In September, in Adidas AG v Christian Fellowship Church, the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB) issued a non-precedential, but potentially instructive, opinion in which it sustained a petition for cancellation on the grounds of non-use. The case analysed whether sales of only a small number of goods by Christian Fellowship Church constituted "use in commerce" under the Trademark Act.

Officials from SIPO and EPO met in Lyon, France earlier this month to commemorate 30 years of cooperation and also to discuss further collaboration

Panellists were invited to “tame the beast” of functionality in a panel on industrial designs, which also served as an appetiser ahead of the Working Question on design functionality scheduled for debate at next year’s AIPPI Congress in Milan

Attendees at a panel session at the AIPPI Congress received some advice on how to deal with a bad faith use of their trade marks

Potatoes were on the menu at an AIPPI session on collective marks and geographical indications. Armed with promotional golf equipment and cuddly toys, and sporting a potato-themed tie, Patrick Kole of the Idaho Potato Commission illustrated why the state of Idaho in the United States (“a place I’m proud to call home”) produces “the best potatoes in the world”

Apple and Samsung being referred to mediation, Erich Spangenberg making a draft IPR available to challenge a Depomed patent, Alibaba’s patent portfolio growth, Jay-Z and Kanye West winning a case in New York, and the monkey selfie's implications for the scope of copyright law were in the IP headlines this week