This morning the IPKat carried a note on Scansafe Ltd v Messagelabs Ltd, a Chancery Division decision from Mr Justice Patten which was noted on Lawtel.
The IPKat has since received an email from solicitors acting on behalf of Scansafe, informing him that the Lawtel note erroneously stated that Scansafe's application for injunctive relief was dismissed. Lawtel has since withdrawn its note and the IPKat, not wishing to mislead his readers, has removed his note on the case too.
Latest ECDR
Issue 4 of the Sweet & Maxwell bimonthly European Copyright and Design Reports has now been published. Cases available in English in this issue include
* L'Oréal SA v Bellure NV (Cour d'appel de Paris), on the protection of scents in France as authors' works;There's also the Zellweger decision from the Invalidity Division of OHIM's Design Department - horror of horrors, a Community registered design rendered invalid by prior art consisting of a registered trade mark.
* PlayStation (Tribunal of Bolzano, Italy), on the seizure of mod chips that could adapt computer game consoles for both lawful and unlawful purposes;
* Télévision Français 1 v L'Equipe TV (Cour de Cassation, France), on the extent to which a TV news service could make use of the highlights of broadcasts of football matches without authorisation.
As usual, if there are any cases you'd like to see reported in the ECDR, email the IPKat here and tell him all about them.
Lawtel has now republished its report of this case together with the full (corrected) transcript. Since a trademark is a mark of origin, allowing a licensee to use its own trademark on your goods will always give him some benefit in connection with selling his other goods. That must be inevitable. The injunction granted seems mainly to relate to the contractual issues and therefore very much on its own fact rather than this interesting issue of principle.
ReplyDeletePatten J. decides that he won't resolve the issue of whether the misrepresentation in this case is actionable as passing off when the replacement product has a quite different technical origin.
The parties would be prudent to settle this case especially the publicity must have made most customers aware that the new Messagelabs product doesn't have the same technical origin as the old. Sadly, their services are now beyond my touch and I have to suffer the junk mail.