LATEST EURO-CASES

This week has seen a happy confluence: the September issue of the European Copyright and Design Reports and the European Trade Mark Reports have both come out. Both are published by Sweet & Maxwell. If you want to know what's in them ...

European Copyright and Design Reports

Two Dutch cases are reported in English in this issue. They are

* Stichting Bescherming Rechten Entertainment Industrie Nederland (BREIN) v Techno Design "Internet Programming BV (Court of Appeal of Amsterdam) - the zoekmp3.nl case, involving liability for offering and/or hosting internet services that permitted access to unlawfully uploaded music files;

* Adam Curry v Audax Publishing BV (District Court of Amsterdam) - the first case in Europe to consider the legal effect of a Creative Commons licence, in this instance relating to photos posted on flickr by a publicity-hungry but privacy-conscious family of TV celebrities.

There are also some desperately serious European Court of Justice rulings involving Portugal (for failure to implement Council Directive 92/100) and Uradex/Brutele (on the circumstances in which collecting societies can do their collecting ...).


European Trade Mark Reports

Three cases in this issue appear in English for the first time. They are

* Intel Corporation v Empresa Nacional de Telecommunicasiones (Supreme Court, Sweden) - on whether there had been genuine use of the ENTELCARD marks to prevent Intel getting them revoked for non-use;

* Hastens Sangar AB v Rock Raamsveld BV (Hague District Court) - a bloody battle to the death between the owner of some trade marks for a rather comfortable range of beds and a cut-price competitor who challenged their validity;

* Dr OK Wack Chemie GmbH v Brookside Import Specialities Inc (Swiss Federal Court) - a battle for the heart and soul of the S100 trade mark in Switzerland between the mark's German progenitor and a former US agent.

Other attractions in this case include the attempt of Jaguar Cars to block registration of JAGUAR for watches.

Above: the lack of a prehensive thumb proves to be a major design flaw as this jaguar takes a break after struggling in vain to put its wristwatch on.