The Court of Justice of the EU is concerned about the high fees practicated by the collecting society. She thinks that imposing these high fees may amount to an abuse of a dominant position. The Court also decided that a Czech law that absolved health establishments from paying royalties for music played to their guests was incompatible with the EU Copyright Directive
British Petroleum vs. The Community Trademarks and Design Court (Republic of Poland)
Case File No XXII GWzt 15/08 British Petroleum p.l.c. requested that: The respondent be prohibited from infringing the claimant’s registered rights of Community trade mark Nos 1 991, 1 142 363, 1 968 403, 3 363 652 and 1 916 550 by prohibiting it from: a)using green as dominant colour on the outer surfaces of […]
Helena Rubinstein And L’Oréal vs. OHIM
Case C-100/11 P The present case concerns the appeal brought by Helena Rubinstein SNC and L’Oréal SA (‘Helena Rubinstein’ and ‘L’Oréal’; or, collectively, ‘the appellants’) against the judgment by which the General Court dismissed the actions which they had brought against the decisions of the First Board of Appeal of the Office for Harmonisation in […]
CJEU ruled!
The Court of Justice of the EU is concerned about the high fees practicated by the collecting society. She thinks that imposing these high fees may amount to an abuse of a dominant position. The Court also decided that a Czech law that absolved health establishments from paying royalties for music played to their guests […]
Twitter in danger of lawsuit with IBM
Even though, the two companies announced, last month, that they had reached an agreement, that settled a 2013 claim by IBM, Twitter paid $36 million to avoid a patent infringement suit.
New changes to the Common Regulation
The Madrid Union Assembly approved new changes to the Common Regulation during his 48th session held in September in Geneva. These new changes came into effect on 1st January 2015. When an application will be processed, the international bureau will use new guidelines. Some amendments include the changing of renewal fees for international registration, which […]
New TTIP Proposals on Intellectual Property between Europe and the United States
Europe released online last week the first TTIP documents, two-page sheets for each of the 23 chapters. For the intellectual property chapter, no negotiating texts have been posted yet. Europe plans to address in TTIP the fact that the United States, unlike other countries, does not require radio stations to pay royalties to performers when […]
CJEU ruled: EU online copyright-infringement action
Due to the case Hejduk vs. EnergieAgentur, CJEU ruled that an EU member state has the power to hear an infringement action regarding the copyright-infringing work accessible online in that country. The court is concerned about the posting of copyrighted images online without the consent of the copyright owner.
The number of patent applications grew in 2014
Even though the number of patent applications grew last year more than the year before, the total number of granted patents was smaller in 2014 than 2013. In 2014 were 64.600 patents granted compared to 66.700 in 2013.
EU’s Resale Right Directive
CJEU said that an artist or his heir could claim royalties from the re-sale of their work. The Court also said that even if the seller should pay the re-sale, the cost could actually be borne by the buyer. The EU’s Resale Right Directive specifies that member states should provide a re-sale right for the […]
Issues regarding the attempts to trademark the phrase “Je suis Charlie”
OHIM says that these applications are unlikely to pass. Even though a large number of applications were filed all over the world, none of them has been filed at OHIM yet. However, France’s IP office rejected 50 attempts to trademark the phrase “Je suis Charlie” due to ‘overriding public interest’.