Trademarks & Domain Names

Trademark assignment recordals against UK rights have been on the rise since Brexit, as EU trademark owners are now required to manage these rights separately.

When businesses merge with or acquire other businesses, the challenge for IP professionals doesn’t stop once the deal is complete. For IP rights to be properly updated and maintained, the question of how to brand and structure the newly merged business first needs to be addressed.

Two types of trademark watching exist to help brand owners to protect their rights: Trademark watching for conflicting trademark registrations and keyword monitoring for unauthorised use of brand rights online. We explain why these services are so important and how they work.

The number of countries joining the Madrid System for international trademark registrations continues to grow, with Chile and Cape Verde the latest to deposit instruments of accession. Applicants will be able to designate the countries in their international trademark registrations (IR) as of July this year.

Have you ever thought about using a well-known painting or work of art as a trademark? It is a strategy that has proved successful in the past, as illustrated by Nestlé’s adoption of the Johannes Vermeer painting Milkmaid. However, there are a number of pitfalls that must first be identified and overcome, as Volha Parfenchyk explains.

On 1 June 2022, Novagraaf's Luke Portnow and Thomsen Trampedach's Markus Rouvinen provided useful take-home points and experiences on implementing smart solutions to current IP challenges in private practice and in-house.

Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) became a hot topic and a potential cause of panic for many IP owners at the beginning of the year. Could the arrival of NFTs and the growth of the virtual herald a revolution for IP rights.

The joint study released in March also discusses how the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated existing problems by opening new opportunities for illicit trade.

If you registered your brand name as a trademark, you can oppose the (more recent) use of a similar name for similar products and/or services if that use could cause confusion among the relevant public. To exercise your trademark rights, you must first monitor and identify for conflicting use. 

Businesses and their trademark departments need to react quickly to new global and digital challenges today if they are to secure their brand for the future.

Brands routinely find creative and innovative ways to generate new customers or retain existing ones. A notable recent example of this has been the use of sub-brands to branch out into the same or a new market without jeopardising the parent brand’s existing position. We discuss the trademark implications.

Oppositions to EU trademark applications that included the word ‘Rocky’ have been rejected on the grounds that any likelihood of confusion with the titular film character has been neutralised by the obvious conceptual differences.