4 mars 2006 Par Annabelle BURON

New law in Morocco

Provisions that came into effect on February 20, 2006 brought important changes with: -The approval of sound and smell signs as trademarks -The implementation of an opposition proceeding which will open 2 months starting from the publication date

Usage

24 févr. 2006 Par Jean-Philippe BRESSON

Reliability on another registered trademark

The European Court of First instance ruled on February 23, 2006 that the owner of a registered trademark cannot be exempted of submitting evidence of the use of that trademark by simply raising the use of a similar registered trademark.

Similitude signes

4 févr. 2006 Par Ladan DIRICKX

Factual return of the partial reproduction

When trademarks are not identical, the CJEC classical approach is to prove a possible confusion between the signs. Recent cases apply a former analysis tending to consider that the sole partial reproduction of the earlier right is sufficient to lead to confusion.

Internet

4 févr. 2006 Par Eugénie CHAUMONT

EUROSTAR

January 10, 2006 : The Eurostar railway network and the Eurostar Dutch diamond merchant both applied for the domain name eurostar.eu, on the basis of legitimate registered trademarks EUROSTAR but the Dutch company was 6 minutes faster. The railway network chose to contest EDT’s application before the French Commercial Court on the basis of a coexistence…

Internet

30 janv. 2006 Par Ladan DIRICKX

Les echos

October 21, 2005 : The WIPO arbitration and mediation center retained that the registration and use of the domain name lesechos.fr was infringing title right on LES ECHOS, the French economic magazine, along with its protection under French law and ordered the transfer of the domain name to the magazine.

Similitude signes

24 janv. 2006 Par Eugénie CHAUMONT

Possible specific trademarks comparison where watches are concerned

On January 12th, 2006, the European Court of First Instance ruled that these two trademarks were liable to cause confusion for products in class 14. The judge retains that the logo included in the Community trademark application was not sufficient to compensate the prefix Quant shared with the earlier mark to the extent that (i) this…

Internet

24 janv. 2006 Par Eugénie CHAUMONT

vente privée

December 16, 2005 : The web site zone-privee.com was ordered to make unavailable its content because of the resemblances with an earlier web site vente-privee.com because it had the same architecture, identical colors used on the same emplacements, and same advertisings presentation with the same script as vente-privee.com

Distinctiveness

24 janv. 2006 Par Ladan DIRICKX

ALLEZLES BLEUS

January 17, 2006 : The French High Court ruled that the mark ALLEZ LES BLEUS (literally Go on blue guys) was not commonly known at the time of filling and should consequently be regarded as distinctive. It only became well-know after the winning of the world football cup of 1998 by France.

Internet

21 janv. 2006 Par Eugénie CHAUMONT

Keywords

December 8, 2005 : The Paris Tribunal of First Instance stated that there was no counterfeiting when GOOGLE offered to CARTEPHONE company, specialized in phone cards trade, the key word KERTEL which is the mark of KERTEL company, involved in prepaid phone cards, because the use of the sign is made with no proposal of products…

Usage

4 janv. 2006 Par Ladan DIRICKX

Evidence of use shall be identical to trademark registration…not that sure !!!

BUS vs./ ONLINE BUS The Court of First Instance confirms Board of Appeal decision as to the use of a trademark in a different form than the registration.