Via the Lovells February Intellectual Property newsletter (online copy perhaps will be posted here), discussion of ‘must match’ concept in UK design law in Dyson v. Qualtex (concerning ability of manufacturer to design spare parts whose shape or configuration are dependent upon the appearance or configuration of another part).
Trade Dress: IPKat on Smarties Tube Packaging
IPKat discusses Nestle’s decison in UK to change shape of SMARTIES packaging.
Tatoo You Implied License?
Detriot News story (and photo) re tatoo artist’s claim that Rasheed Wallace infringes copyright in tatoo by appearing in Nike ad. EFF commentary here.
A Lovely Voice Accentuated By A Striking Personality
Podcasters may seek inspiration from this archive of radio ads maintained by Duke University.
Campbell Soup Can As Genre
Poster of Campbell Soup Cans by artist Steve Kaufman here.
Interesting Nominet Decision Regarding GAME.CO.UK
With the cavaet that I have not handled domain name disputes under Nominet’s procedure, nor have I read the underlying submissions, I will say that I am ‘surprised’ by this Nominet decision awarding game.co.uk to Game Group, owners of a GAME chain of stores selling, hmm, games.
It’s interesting that someone could establish rights
WIPO Trademark Filing Statistics
IPKat on WIPO’s report on trademark filing statistics. The largest filed under the Madrid System? Henkel.
Ty Stripped of Judgment For Witness Tampering
Softbelly plush bean bag dolls have chamois surfaces used to clean computer screens. At one point they were named SCREENIE BEANIES. Owners of the BEANIE BABY mark, Ty, sued, and prevailed. Ty has now been ordered to forfeit its $700k judgement for tampering with an expert witness who was allegedly prepared to testify that BEANIE had become
‘Mis-classified’ Goods/Services in Extension to U.S. of a Madrid Application
A letter has been circulated to non-U.S. trademark owners by a U.S. law firm indicating that if they were to extend an International Application to the U.S. under the Madrid Protocol, were the U.S. Trademark Office to rule that some or all of the goods/services are mis-classified under U.S. practice, those goods/services, rather than being re-classified (as would
Issues Re Open Source Software Trademarks
Trademark lawyer Anthony Tambourino noted the Red Hat free-distribution trademark story below and writes:
There are a couple of issues to watch out for when representing an “open source” client.First, be clear who the owner of the trademark is. There are thousands (literally) of open source projects (See SourceForge). Often, a half-dozen programmers (a/k/a