This news story reports an Austrian supreme court decision stripping Sony of its trademark and holding that WALKMAN is generic for hand-held portable tape-players.  The text of the decision is not yet available.

Question for discusion:  If WALKMAN is generic in Austria, can I assemble them in Austria ans sell them into the rest of the EEC?  The 1998 ECJ SILHOUETTE case applies to the exhaustion of trademark rights, not the use of generic terms (for the text of the SILHOUETTE decison, click on caselaw and use ‘Silhouette’ as a search term when you go to the ECJ site.).  Here’s more on parallel goods within the EEC.