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Home / community trade marks / gmail / Jeremy Phillips / Lego / unfair competition / Breaking news -- and it's bad for Google and Lego

Breaking news -- and it's bad for Google and Lego

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Here are two pieces of breaking news: Google has lost its appeal against the CTM opposition lodged by a German businessman with a mark including the word "G-mail" in its bid to secure pan-European protection for the word Gmail (see here) and Lego's attempt to use unfair competition law to resist competition from makers of compatible bricks has failed in Italy (see here). Time permitting, the IPKat hopes to revisit each of these decisions at greater length.
Breaking news -- and it's bad for Google and Lego Breaking news -- and it's bad for Google and Lego Reviewed by Jeremy on Tuesday, March 18, 2008 Rating: 5

1 comment:

  1. AnonymousTuesday, 18 March 2008 at 15:24:00 GMT

    Lego has also failed before the Greek courts, at least on one occasion which has reached the Greek Civil Supreme Court (Areios Pagos).

    Having succeded at first intance against Ritvik, a canadian toy-brick manufacturer, Lego lost on appeal. The action was based not only on unfair competition, but also on tm and copyright infringement. The Athens Court of Appeal dismissed the action on all grounds (unfair competition was dismissed as time-barred), on the basis of a not really sophisticated reasoning (it didn't harm me.. at the time I was with Dontas Law Offices, who acted for Ritvik).

    Both litigants filed final appeals before Areios Pagos, but they were both dismissed (a rather peculiar story) which effectively finalised the result before the court of appeal.

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