December 6, 2008

It is interesting to hear Marks and Spencer is being sued by Interflora for using Interflora’s brand in their Google advertising.

I would hazard a guess that in many organisations the people at the top and the legal department are ...

December 10, 2008

The EPO define a computer implemented invention as an invention that works by using a computer, a computer network or other programmable apparatus. To qualify, the invention also needs to have one or more features which are “realis...

December 11, 2008

Following up to our earlier blog post, a new decision has been issued in the ongoing legal battle between Mattel, the makers of Barbie dolls, and MGA, the makers of Bratz.  Last week Mattel was able to get an injunction to stop Bra...

December 16, 2008

Data protection laws regulate how personal data is used. The UK principal legislation in this area is the Data Protection Act 1998 (“DPA“) which implements the EU”s Data Protection Directive. If you market or intend to market goods...

December 24, 2008

Azrights is organising a meeting of sole practitioner IP/IT law firms to explore the possibility of sharing certain costs and resources, particularly those of working towards Investors in People and Lexcel accreditation, and genera...

January 9, 2009

How not to lose sense of priorities when running a business, that is the question.  As you get sucked into the day to day, it is all too easy to forget the bigger picture.  So, the holidays were useful thinking time.  This year, as r...

January 15, 2009

Following my earlier post I noticed this piece by Dayne Kaufman in Net Search Direct about Yahoo’s US terms for PPC advertisers.  He concludes

“after you spend hours creating your campaigns, adding your keywords and deciding how mu...

January 19, 2009

We recently queried some small items of 20 Euro bank charges which we could find no explanation for.

HSBC identified the charges as being raised by Spanish bankers – Banco de Bilbao – who take receive money on behalf of OHIM (the O...

January 20, 2009

Unless you just have a lifestyle business you need to understand intellectual property rights. In fact even if you have a lifestyle business, you still need to know enough about intellectual property rights so as to avoid trouble by...

January 22, 2009

The state of the world economy is not in the best shape and businesses are looking to cut costs. Trade mark owners are no different as they try to streamline expenditure without compromising brand protection.

Cost reduction, in the...

January 22, 2009

The Intel Case

The European Court of Justice’s landmark ruling in Intel Corp v CPM (UK) Ltd on the 27 November may alter the landscape of European trademarks. This case clarified the European position on trade mark dilution and did...

January 22, 2009

China is often cited as a high risk country for organisations to effectively enforce their intellectual property rights. There are however, a growing number of success stories where brand owners have successfully enforced their righ...