Never Too Late: If you missed the IPKat last week!

If you were too busy to keep up with last week's IP news, here's the summary of what you missed.

Trade Marks and Designs

Image from Pixabay.

Marcel Pemsel evaluated the ruling of the German Supreme Court concerning the 3D trade mark for Volkswagen's famous 'Bulli' vehicle. A model car manufacturer continued selling Bulli models in packaging stating that they were "officially licenced" after its licence agreement was terminated, but raised questions of "genuine use" of the mark during the infringement proceedings. 

Katfriend Henning Hartwig (Bardehle Pagenberg) reported on the new decision of the EU General Court on the validity of a registered Community design in light of a piece of prior art that only showed a two-dimensional view of the design.

Patents

Rose Hughes shared the news of the referral of three questions to the Enlarged Board of Appeal on how and if the description should be used to interpret the claims of a patent when assessing patentability.

Copyright

Antonios Baris discussed the decision in the US case of Griner v. King, which concerned the "success kid" meme. The court held that "the fact that everyone else is doing it is not a particularly compelling justification" for the fair use doctrine under 17 U.S.C. § 107 to apply to the creation and dissemination of a meme on social media.

Kevin Bercimuelle-Chamot examined the ruling of the Paris Court of Appeal on the parody exception and freedom of artistic expression, as well as the notion of transformative work. The case concerned the famous character, Tintin, who was depicted in the parodic works of American painter Hopper.