The registration as a Community trade of the Rubik cube’s shape is valid. The graphical representation of the cube doesn’t contain a technical solution to prevent its protection as a trademark.

At the request of Seven Towns, a British company which manages especially intellectual property rights related to “Rubik Cube”, the Union Trademark Office (OHIM) registered in 1999 as a Community trademark the three-dimensional shape of this cube for the “three-dimensional puzzles”.

In 2006, Simba Toys, a German toy manufacturer requested the cancellation at OHIM for the three-dimensional trademark because it contains a technical solution consisting in its ability to rotate, and such a solution can only be protected under a patent and not as a trademark.

Since OHIM dismissed the petition, Simba Toys notified the Court with an action for annulment of the OHIM’s decision, but the Court dismissed the action brought by Simba Toys.

The High Court of Cassation and Justice ruled that, for the purposes of art. 3 paragraphs (1) pt. 11 lit. a) of Law no. 344/2005, counterfeit goods is “any goods, including packaging, bearing without authorization an identical trademark or which does not differ in its essential aspects of a product or service trademark, legally registered for the same type of goods and, therefore, violate the rights of the holder of that trademark”.

The High Court held that by introducing into the country from the territory of a third country (outside the EEA), of goods bearing an identical sign to the international trademarks, held the exclusive right of use of the trademark owner, without his consent and, consequently, this is a violation of intellectual property rights.

The Court of Justice of the European Union released on Thursday, December 18, 2014, the judgment in the Case C-364/13.

A body unable to evolve into a human being is not a human embryo in the Directive regarding the legal protection of biotechnological inventions.Therefore, the uses of such a body for industrial or commercial purposes can, in principle, be patentable.
The Directive regarding the legal protection of biotechnological inventions provides that the uses of human embryos for industrial or commercial purposes are not patentable.

In the Brüstle judgment from October 18, 2011, the Court held that the term ‘human embryo’ includes unfertilized human egg cells which by parthenogenesis, were stimulated to divide and grow as long as these egg cells are also, like the embryos created by the fertilization of an egg cell, likely to trigger the development of a human being.

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’.