Quick and dirty; more on expedited TM applications; Copyright royalties and internet radio

A "quick and dirty" translation of the reasoning of the Advocate General in the LIMONCHELO dispute, Case C- 344/05 P OHIM v Shaker (see earlier post by the IPKat here), comes from Stéphane Ambrosini (Tomkins & Co, Dublin):

"24. The determining question is therefore to ask whether the Tribunal effectively has, on the basis of its own definition, identified a dominant feature in the mark applied for, beside which (NDT: in comparison to which) all other features of the mark are negligible. The Tribunal has not reached any such conclusion. ...

26. From the conclusions reached by the Tribunal, the mark applied for does not include any feature which, according to the method developed by the Tribunal, would be capable of use as a basis for a unique comparison between the marks, in order to determine whether a risk of confusion exists. On the contrary, both marks should have been submitted to a global appreciation of the risk of confusion. Since this was not performed, we can only note that the decision is afflicted by a legal error and must be overturned".

Many thanks, Stéphane, for taking the trouble to write in.


More information concerning expedited trade mark applications in Europe continues to arrive. Today it's the turn of Germany and indeed OHIM, courtesy of Dr Ralf Sieckmann (Cohausz Dawidowicz Hannig & Sozien, Düsseldorf) who writes:

"The German Patent and Trade Mark Office provides an expedited trade mark registration procedure upon request and upon payment of an extra fee of 150 euro. So registration is performed within 3 to 5 months, depending on the complexity of the list of goods and services.

Although OHIM does not provide expedited registration procedure by law, using e-filing of the trade mark application via MYPAGE account, direct payment of the application fees and using the newly installed e-business service E-COMM shortens the formal (classification and so on) and hopefully the substantial examination to less than 10 work days before the three to five months up to publication.

Somewhat strange in the E-COMM proceedings: The annexes required to be filed as PDF files were transformed by OHIM into low quality JPG files and then re-transformed into low quality pdf files attached to the E-COMM submission. So print screens and hyperlinks embedded into the original pdf (from the original word file) were lost or most illegible".

The IPKat's Austrian friend Wolfgang Schramek adds:

"Article 38 of the German Trade Mark Act (deutsches Markengesetz) provides the possibility of expedited examination upon express request. The fee is 200 Euro.

The German Patent and Trade Mark Office gives the following information on its official Webpage:
Wie lange dauert das Eintragungsverfahren?

Das Eintragungsverfahren ist durchschnittlich nach 10 bis 12 Monaten abgeschlossen. Durch Antrag kann eine beschleunigte Prüfung herbeigeführt werden. Für die beschleunigte Prüfung ist eine gesonderte Gebühr zu entrichten. Ihre Anmeldung wird so bevorzugt bearbeitet. Die Markeneintragung kann dann bereits nach 3 bis 4 Monaten erfolgen. Falls Sie beabsichtigen, Ihre Anmeldung auch international als IR-Marke registrieren zu lassen, kann für Sie eine beschleunigte Prüfung von Interesse sein. http://www.dpma.de/infos/faq/faqm.html".

From the ever-vigilant Simon Haslam (Abel & Imray) comes this link to a BBC news item on the likelihood of increased copyright royalties being charged to internet radio stations, some of whom warn that they could be forced off the air by a big increase in the royalties they pay to play music. This is too big a topic for a swift and pithy comment on this blog, but the IPKat and Merpel will be paying careful attention to developments. The business models that underwrite internet radio are not sufficiently well-known at this point and more information is needed.