Around the IP blogs

Be sure not to miss any important developments with our tour around the IP blogosphere! 

Sunny days ahead 

Trade marks

Marques reports on the seemingly never-ending story of Louboutin and its red sole trade marks: this time in China. After the Chinese Intellectual Property Office refused registration of a red position mark for lack of distinctiveness, Louboutin filed subsequent appeals with the Trademark Review and Adjudication Board (TRAB), the Beijing IP Cour the Beijing High Court. In 2019, the case reached the Chinese Supreme Court, which ordered the TRAB to reassess the trade mark’s distinctiveness.

Fashion Law looks at the legal strategy behind another luxury brand, Cartier, and its love bracelets. Depending upon the jurisdiction, the strategy relies mainly on trade mark and trade dress protection, including actions seeking blocking injunctions against ISPs, whose services are used in the sales of counterfeit goods online.

Copyright

In the JIPLP blog, Ilanah Fhima comments on the recent Advocate General’s opinion in Brompton Bicycle, C-833/18. The author looks at the implications of the Cofemel decision (see here) and on the approach taken by the AG to achieve some balance between cumulation and exclusion of copyright protection for functional shapes.

On the other side of the Atlantic, IPWatchDog discusses a report from the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF). In this report, the ITIF, a Washington-based think tank, suggests solutions for the wide-spread digital content piracy on the Internet. The ITIF stresses the importance of voluntary agreements between copyright holders and ISPs (payment processors, advertising networks, domain name registrars).

Patents

After the news that the UK will not participate in the UPC hit the blogosphere, Kluwer Patent Blog considered whether the UPC system is worthwhile at all without the UK. The fate of the project is now in the hands of the German Federal Constitutional Court, which is expected to hand down its ruling within the next few months on the question of the constitutionality of the legislation enabling the UPC ratification. Italy, the Netherlands and Denmark have all expressed an interest to take the place of what was meant to be London’s UPC central division in London.

FossPatents continues a series of publications on the proposed amendments to reform the German Patent Law. After critising the reform’s approach to injunctions and comparing the suggested system with EU law, the blog now interviews German patent litigators as to their views on the reform. Apparently, they consider that, if adopted, the Patent Law amendments will have a minimal impact on injunctive relief in patent cases.