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<font size="-1">trily, trademark law is functioning the way it
should be.</font><br>
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<th nowrap="nowrap" valign="BASELINE" align="RIGHT">Subject: </th>
<td>[The IPKat] Over-intellectualisation of European trade
mark law -- a fresh ex...</td>
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<th nowrap="nowrap" valign="BASELINE" align="RIGHT">Date: </th>
<td>Thu, 28 Apr 2011 19:48:45 -0700 (PDT)</td>
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<th nowrap="nowrap" valign="BASELINE" align="RIGHT">From: </th>
<td>Jeremy <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:jjip@btinternet.com"><jjip@btinternet.com></a></td>
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<td><a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:jjip@btinternet.com">jjip@btinternet.com</a></td>
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<th nowrap="nowrap" valign="BASELINE" align="RIGHT">To: </th>
<td><a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:ipkat_readers@googlegroups.com">ipkat_readers@googlegroups.com</a></td>
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<td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Tiddles
wears the dunce's hat again after<br>
forgetting how to spell "syntactically<br>
" unusual juxtapositions" ...</i></td>
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<b>At yesterday's plenary session of the Fordham Intellectual
Property Conference,</b> covering issues arising from European
intellectual property law, this member of the IPKat team wailed long
and loud about what he termed the "over-intellectualisation" of
European trade mark law. The Kat has received numerous responses
from those attending, ranging from warm support on the one side to a
sniffy comment that no-one with academic credentials has any right
to complain about something having intellectual content. In the
later trade mark-related sessions which he attended in the
afternoon, several speakers picked up the same theme: trade mark law
in Europe had become almost unmanageably complex. <br>
<br>
If readers want an example of the sort of thing the Kat finds
unacceptable, here's a current one. He has just heard from the UK
Intellectual Property Office that two new conjoined cases have been
referred by the German Bundespatentgericht to the Court of Justice
of the European Union (ECJ) for a preliminary ruling: Cases C-90/11
and C-91/11 <i>Strigl and others.</i> The question for the court is
this:<br>
<blockquote>"Is the ground for refusal under Article 3(1)(b) and/or
(c) of the<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;">
[trade mark harmonisation]</span></b> directive<b><span
class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;"> [<a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2008:299:0025:0033:EN:PDF">2008/95</a>]</span></b>
also applicable to a word sign which consists of a descriptive
word combination and a non-descriptive letter sequence, if the
trade perceives the letter sequence as an abbreviation of the
descriptive words because it reproduces their initial letters, and
the trade mark as a whole can thus be construed as a combination
of mutually explanatory descriptive indications or
abbreviations?".</blockquote>
In case you are wondering, Articles 3(1)(b) and 3(1)(c) are not
exactly rocket science. They provide that signs can't be registered
as trade marks if they are devoid of distinctive character or
consist exclusively of signs or indications "which may serve, in
trade, to designate the kind, quality, quantity, intended purpose,
value, geographical origin, or the time of production of the goods
or of rendering of the service, or other characteristics of the
goods or services". In other words, you can't have a trade mark for
something that's not distinctive or if it is descriptive. In an
ideal world, a court would be able to apply these provisions to the
facts before it with the need to refer them to distant tribunal and
add another two years to the length of the proceedings.<br>
<br>
One can imagine situations in which the referred question will be
answered "yes" and those in which it will be answered "no";
situations in which the "trade" is also a relevant consumer of goods
and services for which registration is sought and those in which it
isn't; situations in which the combination of the descriptive word
combination and the non-descriptive letter sequence constitutes a
syntactically unusual juxtaposition and is therefore registrable (as
in Case C‑474/01 P <i>Procter & Gamble v OHIM</i> [2004] ECR
I-5173, BABY-DRY) and those in which it is not. The court may also
be asked to consider those cases in which the descriptive word
combination precedes the non-descriptive letter sequence and <i>vice
versa, </i>as well as those in which the descriptive word
combination includes a numeral or a place name, and so on. <br>
<br>
Any ruling from the court on the question referred in this case is
not therefore the end of the question-and-answer process but a
launchpad from which subsequent refining questions are fired at the
court in the hope of rendering into a verbal format every
conceivable combination of facts. This may be intellectually
satisfying, but it is not easy for potential trade mark applicants
to understand -- or for even well-trained and highly qualified trade
mark practitioners to explain.<br>
<br>
This particular reference addresses absolute bars to registrability,
but the same phenomenon can be found, to a greater or lesser extent,
across the whole range of trade mark law -- infringement,
cancellation, revocation, comparison of marks, taking of unfair
advantage without due cause, referential use, comparative
advertising. According to one speaker yesterday (the Kat thinks it
was OHIM's Paul Maier but is willing to be corrected) the ECJ has
heard some 150 trade mark cases -- a remarkable number which
represents around ten cases a year.<br>
<br>
For the record, the UK Intellectual Property Office welcomes your
opinion on this ECJ reference (if you have one). Just email <b><a
moz-do-not-send="true" href="mailto:policy@ipo.gsi.gov.uk">policy@ipo.gsi.gov.uk
</a></b>before 6 May 2011.<br>
<br>
How to be an intellectual <b><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/article515160.ece">here
</a></b>and <b><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=3784">here</a></b>
<br>
<br>
--<br>
Posted By Jeremy to <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://ipkitten.blogspot.com/2011/04/over-intellectualisation-of-european.html">The
IPKat</a> on 4/29/2011 03:48:00 AM
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