April 14, 2008

The recent ruling in the Procol Harum copyright dispute illustrates the dangers of joint copyright. It is a huge practical problem which anyone whose business involves copyright works should pay heed to.

In the case it...

April 18, 2008

Aaron Greenspan’s continuing dispute with Facebook owner, Mark Zuckerberg has taken the form of a petition to cancel Facebook’s trademark registration in the USA mentioned here. The origins of the dispute lay...

April 24, 2008

The start of a new business will always bring challenges regardless of whether the business takes the form of a sole trader, partnership or a limited liability company. A sole trader trades in his own name and takes the risk of...

April 25, 2008

As reported a couple of days ago by Outlaw.com, HMRC have in recent years been criticised like many other bodies for their failures in complying with the Data Protection Act 1998 by the Information...

April 28, 2008

Trade mark law is never black and white.When it comes to registering a mark, there are often surprises once the application is examined by the Intellectual Property Office (IPO).

For example, Jeremy Phillips recently ...

May 6, 2008

An established trader in USA has been selling pickled goods under the name McSweet for a number of years. However, as soon as he filed an application for a trade mark at the USPTO McDonald’s opposed the registration on the...

May 14, 2008

In recent years, a number of comparative websites have appeared online in which consumers can compare prices of a number of businesses without the need to search individual websites.

Websites such as Expedia use special web...

May 29, 2008

My recent trip to INTA was interesting on many grounds, which I hope to report on over the next few weeks, particularly as regards the insights I gained into why anyone having products manufactured in China needs to register a...

August 14, 2008

Japan has joined a handful of other jurisdictions which recognise the shape of a Coca-Cola bottle as trade mark. According to the New York Times (see here), Coca-Cola had been pushing for this mark since 2003. They have...

August 14, 2008

In 2005 the book Word Freak and the subsequent documentary Word Wars showcased the zeal of Scrabble players. Scrabble aficionados joined the virtual world in 2006 when the Scrabulous application was added to Facebook. The...