While it is appropriate for a district court to adopt the findings of fact of a magistrate judge’s report and recommendations when deciding a motion for a preliminary injunction, it cannot do so when…
In our previous post, we discussed the issue of terms that are descriptive in English but still lead to likelihood of confusion on an EU level, given the General Court’s belief that " …if the word is…
On 2 July 2020, the Court of Justice of the European Union (“CJEU”) handed down another decision which interprets the mercurial concept of ‘trade mark use’. Case C-684/19 - mk advokaten is a…
Yesterday, 2 July 2020, the European Commission announced that it will refer Romania to the CJEU for not implementing the Trade Mark Directive (Directive (EU) 2015/2436) – see here.
While the…
Parties and Mark
The defendant is an Amazon entity. It is responsible for Amazon’s keyword advertising on Google Ads (formerly Adwords). The plaintiff is the exclusive licensee of the trademark BOSS…
Should a registered EU trademark which consists of a descriptive term (in one of the EU languages) be capable to prevent registration of a later EUTM which is fanciful but happens to contain the same…
The preliminary injunction was vacated, however, with respect to products the licensee held in inventory and that the mark owner did not seek to repurchase under the parties’ license agreement.
A…
On 20 May 2020, we received another decision in the long-running dispute between Merck KGgA (“Merck Global”) and their former US subsidiary (“Merck US”). This case dealt with the following five…
On 28 May 2020 the General Court rendered its most recent ruling regarding enhanced protection of trade marks with a reputation (T-677/18; available in French and Spanish). Two issues are of…
The business owner’s purported plans to expand to the United States market were vague and conclusory, and his filing of a U.S. trademark application had little bearing on his ability to expand his…
