Marks & Spencer has begun legal action against fellow-supermarket chain, Aldi, arguing that Aldi’s ‘Cuthbert the Caterpillar’ cake, infringes its own ‘Colin the Caterpillar’ intellectual...
Bentley Motors reminds us that early registration of trademarks is key
Bentley Motors has been found to have infringed the trademarks of small family-owned clothing brand, Bentley Clothing, despite an appeal by the luxury car brand. Bentley Motors will not be permitted t...
Protecting the Best of British Food and Drink
New legislation is being considered by the UK Government to protect authentically British food and drink products post-Brexit. The new Geographical Indications (“GI”) rules, will guarantee the aut...
How Will Your Activity Online be Affected by The New EU Copyright Directive – ‘Meme Ban’ or Fake News?
Due to rapid developments in technology, online commercial and creative landscapes have changed dramatically including the way in which content is created, produced, distributed and exploited. As a re...
Trade Mark Monitoring
Most people assume that by registering a trade mark in the EU, they automatically prevent other businesses from registering similar trade marks. This is not the case. The EUIPO cannot monitor all of t...
Sky wins two intellectual property battles (Skype and NOW TV)
The month of May has seen a ray of sunshine for Sky in the courts: firstly, the EU General Court has upheld Sky’s opposition of Skype community trade mark applications (CTMs) on appeal; secondly, in...
Case Update: Ownership of Copyright in Innocent’s Dude Logo
The “dude” In 1998, Fresh Trading Ltd (“Fresh”) started up a new smoothie business that we all now know as Innocent. They engaged an agency called Deepend to design their brand identity. The a...
Case Update: Court of Appeal finds Topshop in a hopeless place
Between March and August 2012, Topshop sold t-shirts displaying a photograph of the popstar Rihanna. The image had been taken by an independent photographer whilst Rihanna was on a video shoot for h...
Website blocking orders extended to trade mark infringement
A test case brought by the owners of luxury brands including Cartier, IWC and Mont-Blanc against five internet service providers (ISPs) Sky, BT, EE, TalkTalk and Virgin has resulted in website blockin...
The cancellation of Redskins US trademarks and its relevance to UK trade mark law
On 18 June 2014, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) granted a petition to cancel six federal trademark registrations containing the word REDSKINS. These included THE REDSKINS, WASHINGTON RED...