Insights

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. 

Establishing valid priority claims can be challenging for co-applicants in Europe, as Stéphanie Landais-Patarin explains.

If you receive an invoice or special offer from a company you do not know, there is a risk it could be a scam. A growing number of dishonest companies are sending out fake invoices and misleading offers hoping to catch patent and trademark owners unaware. 

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.

PPH programmes can help patent applicants to accelerate the grant of a patent application in a second patent office. We set out the opportunities and benefits of the system.

EU General Court decision of 1 December 2021 reaffirms that neither market preferences nor commercial or aesthetic considerations are considered limits to design freedom, as Julia Schefman explains.

Latest development at the EPO is a further example of the challenges that applicants, particularly from the US, face when ensuring valid priority claims for European Patent (EP) applications, as Dr Oliver Harris explains.