trade marks

New CJEU Case: Are Banks Required to Disclose the Identity of their Customers to Trade Mark Holders?

Some readers might remember my blog post on a Dutch decision BREIN v. ING, which basically asked the question whether banks are required to disclose the identity of their customers to copyright holders. As I indicated already in that blog post, German Federal Supreme Court (BGH) was hearing very similar trade mark case at the

Some Exciting CJEU References

Today somewhat more copyright oriented post. It seems that interesting references for preliminary rulings before the Court of Justice of EU are definitely not on the decrease. Except for the older pending ones, which I list here, consider this fantastic set of cases. Copyright limitations, such as private copying exemption and library use exemption, but

How frequent is IP litigation in Slovakia?

EISi, an non-university academic research center for IP & IT, is now working on the complex proposal that aims at improving IP specialization of Slovak judges. Obviously, when considering the impact of the proposed changes, we also had to have a look at the number of litigated cases before Slovak courts. Huťko is glad to

Trade Mark Functions – New Chance for CJEU

British IPO just reported a new reference for prelimary ruling – Leidseplein Beheer B.V. and Hendrikus Jacobus Marinus De Vries v Red Bull GmbH and Red Bull Nederland B.V. C-65/12, which deals with following interesting question: Is Article 5(2) of Directive 89/104/EEC to be interpreted as meaning that there

Frisdranken Case: Another Bit on ´Intermediary Non-use´ of the Trade Mark

Today, the Court of Justice of the European Union decided very interesting trade mark case – Frisdranken Industrie Winters BV C-119/10, which deals with the question of whether intermediary companies, such as a service provider who, under an order from and on the instructions of another person, fills packaging which was supplied to it by

Hidden Gems of L’Oreal v. eBay

Some of you might be wondering why Huťko did not report on two most interesting CJEU cases of this beautiful summer – L´Oréal v. eBay C-324/09 and Interflora C-323/09. The main reason is the complexity of said cases. Summing them up in two separate articles would be just not enough to cover everything. And after

Five Interesting & Quite New CJEU Cases

Some recent and interesting IT&IP cases from Luxemburg. Pierre Fabre Dermo-Cosmétique C‑439/09. This relatively unknown decision is actually one of the most important developments of the competition law when it comes to the internet. With AG prof. Mazák, Third Chamber of the Court of Justice held that Article 101(1) TFEU must be interpreted as meaning that, in