Passionate about IP! Since June 2003 the IPKat has covered copyright, patent, trade mark, designs, info-tech and confidentiality issues from a mainly UK and European perspective. Read, post comments and participate!

The team is Eleonora Rosati, Annsley Merelle Ward and Merpel. E-mail the Kats here!

The team is joined by GuestKats Kevin Bercimuelle-Chamot, Jocelyn Bosse, Alessandro Cerri, Anastasiia Kyrylenko, Marcel Pemsel and Anna Maria Stein.

SpecialKats: Verónica Rodríguez Arguijo (TechieKat), Antonios Baris (Book Review Editor), Rose Hughes (PatKat) and Chijioke Okorie (Africa Correspondent).

InternKats: Asude Sena Moya and Söğüt Atilla.
Home / Jeremy Phillips / News flash: Febreze beats Air Wick

News flash: Febreze beats Air Wick

-

News flash: Febreze routs Air Wick

Mr Justice Lewison ruled yesterday in Procter & Gamble v Reckitt Benckiser [2006] EWHC 3154 (Ch) (available here on BAILII) that the packaging of Reckitt Benckiser's Air Wick Odour Stop infringed Procter & Gamble's validly-registered Community design for the packaging of Febreze (a custom-designed canister surmounted by a trigger within a housing). Comment to follow, either late today or some time tomorrow).
News flash: Febreze beats Air Wick News flash: Febreze beats Air Wick Reviewed by Jeremy on Thursday, December 14, 2006 Rating: 5

2 comments:

  1. FilemotThursday, 14 December 2006 at 16:30:00 GMT

    Now Jeremy will you reconsider your view that registered designs are not powerful rights in the lookalike market? Remember too that Gowers was quite satisfied that the design law worked. It is a shame that the decision does not include pictures of the prior art, but the infringement certainly created the same overall impression on me as the design registration

    ReplyDelete
  2. JeremyThursday, 14 December 2006 at 16:34:00 GMT

    I have reconsidered my position, which is that I was right before and I'm still right.

    A mousetrap is a powerful weapon too - but only against the mouse that walks straight into it. Reckitts could have hardly copied more of the Febreze design if they tried - but they could have copied a good deal less, still producing a plausible lookalike while not infringing the design as registered.

    ReplyDelete

All comments must be moderated by a member of the IPKat team before they appear on the blog. Comments will not be allowed if the contravene the IPKat policy that readers' comments should not be obscene or defamatory; they should not consist of ad hominem attacks on members of the blog team or other comment-posters and they should make a constructive contribution to the discussion of the post on which they purport to comment.

It is also the IPKat policy that comments should not be made completely anonymously, and users should use a consistent name or pseudonym (which should not itself be defamatory or obscene, or that of another real person), either in the "identity" field, or at the beginning of the comment. Current practice is to, however, allow a limited number of comments that contravene this policy, provided that the comment has a high degree of relevance and the comment chain does not become too difficult to follow.

Learn more here: http://ipkitten.blogspot.com/p/want-to-complain.html

Subscribe to: Post Comments ( Atom )
Powered by Blogger.