Guarantee of Confusion: When AI Scrapes the News
The Illusion of More
FEBRUARY 13, 2025
That title riffs on the term of art in trademark law known as likelihood of confusion.
Protection of Color Trademarks under the Indian Trademark Law
Kashishipr
MAY 11, 2022
A trademark refers to a recognizable expression, design, or sign uniquely identifying the products or services of a specific source and differentiating them from those of others. A trademark may be located on the packaging, voucher, label, or the product itself. For more visit: [link].
Trademark Law 
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An Explorative Study on the Liability of Domain Name Registrars with reference to Trademark Infringement.
IP and Legal Filings
FEBRUARY 20, 2023
However, the same process does not include any examination or verification to determine whether the domain name is distinctive or capable of distinguishing itself from the competition, i.e., existing domain names that are clearly in violation of trademark law. Schechter, The Rational Basis of Trademark Protection, 40 HARV.
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The Interplay between Religious Sensitiveness and Trademark Law in India
IP and Legal Filings
FEBRUARY 2, 2024
As a result, the rise of hypersensitivity to religion, religious texts, and religious symbols determines the jurisprudence around the utilisation of such marks under Indian trademark law, even if they are not strictly prohibited. DB) [9] AIR 2016 SC 461 [10] MANU/MH/1859/2017 [11] W.P.(C).
The Madrid Protocol: Streamlining International Trademark Registration
IP and Legal Filings
DECEMBER 3, 2024
With the filing of a single application, referred to as International Registration, administrative inconvenience is avoided when companies want to secure trademarks in any of the countries that participate. These include major economies such as the United States, the European Union, China, India, and Japan.
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Bridging Borders: How Customs Laws Shape Trademark Protection in India
IP and Legal Filings
JANUARY 8, 2025
Introduction Customs law and trademark law operate at a crucial interface when it comes to protecting intellectual property rights (IPRs) and against counterfeiting. The Trademarks Act, 1999, gives trademark protection to the identity of brands. Hence, there is a strengthening of customs laws.
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Common Mistakes to Avoid When Registering a Trademark
IP and Legal Filings
NOVEMBER 12, 2024
One of the most effective ways to protect your brand and all that it owns, including distinctive features, is through the registration of a trademark. Trademark law grants legal protection of your business name, logo, or slogan against other individuals using the same with regard to protection over intellectual property.
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Distinctiveness in Trademark Law
azrights
NOVEMBER 17, 2021
On the other hand, if you sell bags and umbrellas and want to use the brand name Fresh then that’s a distinctive word that you can register with or without the descriptor Umbrellas or bags because competitors supplying umbrellas and bags do not legitimately need to use the word Fresh to refer to bags and umbrellas.
Trademark law and LinkedIn resumes: watch out?
43(B)log
JULY 25, 2024
In 2022, the relationship dissolved; Portkey objected to Venkateswaran’s alleged references to Portkey and its asserted trademarks since 2022. For example, the First Amended Complaint alleges that Venkateswaran included on LinkedIn that he was the “Fmr Steward of Metapurse,” but then simply “Creator of the @Twobadour pseudonym.”
INTA Weighs in at CJEU on EU Parallel Imports Case
IP Watchdog
JANUARY 14, 2022
The International Trademark Association (INTA) has made an amicus submission before the EU Court of Justice (CJEU) in a case concerning parallel imports and EU trademark law. In the case at hand, Harman, which makes audiovisual equipment, brought trademark infringement proceedings in Poland against AB, a distributor.
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Analyzing Smell Trademarks: Laws, Significance and Issues
IP and Legal Filings
SEPTEMBER 16, 2021
The inculcation of such features into products and services has snowballed into the rise of a separate class of trademarks known as ‘non-conventional trademarks’. Smell marks and Indian trademark laws. Currently, Indian laws do not permit the registration of smell marks.
Print-on-Demand Service Defeats Fish Illustrator’s Copyright Claim–Tomelleri v. Sunfrog
Technology & Marketing Law Blog
MARCH 6, 2024
Causation, as used in the traditional sense, refers to the connection between the tort and the plaintiff’s harm. I’m also left wondering about possibly divergent applications of copyright and trademark law to print-on-demand services. This plaintiff emphasized copyright law but got little traction.
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Copy-Paste Perfumes? The Legal Battle Over Fragrance Dupes
Intepat
MARCH 25, 2025
They also take refuge under the exception granted for comparative marketing, making reference to the luxury product solely as a point of comparison in their advertising. CONCLUSION The rise of fragrance dupes highlights the vital role of trademark law in the protection of luxury perfume brands.
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Trademarks as a Barrier to Free-Speech: An Examination of the MetaBirkins Dispute
SpicyIP
AUGUST 22, 2022
This article seeks to examine how trademark law interacts with the freedom of expression of artists to choose the subject matters they wish to engage with, using the dispute between Hermès, a fashion industry giant and Mason Rothschild, a digital artist, as a contextual backdrop.
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Hashtag or Pound? One Law Firm’s Quest to Trademark #law
JD Supra Law
FEBRUARY 16, 2023
Is it “hashtag law,” as the PTO examiner suggested would be the most common understanding, or “pound law,” as alleged by the unsuccessful registrant of #law as a service mark. And to what does it refer: a hashtag for a social media topic, or a number that can be dialed from a mobile phone to reach an attorney referral service?
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Protecting Culture in an IP-centred World
IPilogue
OCTOBER 7, 2021
The glacier is referred to by the Comox people as “Queneesh”, or white whale, and refers to the creature which tied the early Comox people to their territory during a great flood many of thousands of years ago. The court ultimately decided against the band because “Aboriginal rights are outside the scope of trademark law.”.
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Approach to Non-Conventional Trade Marks in India and in the UK
IP and Legal Filings
JULY 13, 2024
Marks that we feel though these senses are referred to as non-conventional marks which can be equally crucial in distinguishing goods and services of one individual from another individual as the traditional trademarks. Are non-conventional trademarks recognised in India?
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TM Scholars' Roundable: Session 1: The Relevance of Ornamentality in Trademark Law: Acquisition of Rights
43(B)log
JUNE 24, 2022
Things like THE show TM’s inability to distinguish recognition of a reference from source-indicating significance. Losing that distinction was a mistake and it’s the reason we lack normative language to talk about things that aren’t marks. We should try to recover that; even some degree of source identification is not the end of the story.
The Design of Hipster
IP and Legal Filings
MAY 18, 2023
However, the Defendant disputed the Plaintiff’s claim of a monopoly over the hipster tag and design features, arguing that “hipster” referred to a person who carried a hip flask during prohibition – a prior art. To clarify, the law does provide protection against consumer deception through design imitation.
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American Airlines’ Copyright Victory Is a Flight To Nowhere
Copyright Lately
OCTOBER 20, 2024
While logos can be protected under both copyright and trademark law, it’s rare to see a plaintiff succeed on a copyright claim while failing to establish trademark infringement. Now, the site simply references “American” to identify the airline’s flights. million in disgorged profits.
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Trademarking Sounds
IPilogue
AUGUST 9, 2021
A sound can be registered as a trademark if it fulfills the function of a trademark, namely, indicating the origin of the goods and services. Even if it is a well-accepted practice in trademark law, the inherent characteristics of a sound differentiate them from word or design marks.
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How Do People End Up Losing Their Trademark Rights?
Kashishipr
MARCH 2, 2022
Therefore, any action that dilutes the essence and meaning of a registered trademark can lead to its cancellation. Keeping a regular watch on the market for unauthorized use and reproduction of similar or identical marks goes a long way towards safeguarding trademark rights. Let us understand the term better with a few examples.
Trademark Dilution: Understanding, Forms, And Legal Implications Under The Trademarks Act Of 1999
IP and Legal Filings
OCTOBER 28, 2023
A fundamental principle of trademark law permits the owner of a well-known trademark to forbid third parties from using it in a manner that would lessen its distinctiveness. In accordance with a provision of trademark law known as trademark dilution, the owner of a brand may. What is Trademark Dilution?
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WIPO General Assembly moves to diplomatic conferences on designs and traditional knowledge associated with genetic resources
The IPKat
JULY 22, 2022
In 2006, work on simplifying procedures for the protection of industrial designs started in the WIPO Standing Committee on the Law of Trademarks, Industrial Designs and Geographical Indications (SCT) , which has evolved into the draft for the proposed DLT. This is referred to as a proposed new ‘patent disclosure requirement’.
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Beyond The Ordinary: The Rise in Use of Non-Conventional Trademarks in Pharmaceuticals Industry
IP and Legal Filings
DECEMBER 17, 2024
The Trademark law in India, known as Trade Marks Act, 1999, comes into force according to the rules established under the International Principles laid down in TRIPS (Trademark-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights Agreement). When combined with sound, the state trademarks are referred to as multimedia marks.
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Apple Sues USPTO Over SMART KEYBOARD Trademark
IPilogue
DECEMBER 21, 2022
The “generic” ground in trademark law refers to a description of an entire type of product or service that fails to carry out the proper function of a trademark to distinguish one product or service from another. SMART KEYBOARD is thus generic and cannot become a trademark. Apple is not giving up.
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Unreasoned Orders for Personality Rights
IP and Legal Filings
MAY 13, 2023
While the court in Titan Industries did not require proof of falsity, confusion or deception, the Gautam Gambhir court emphasized the need for evidence to establish confusion and disrepute, potentially due to the case being analyzed under trademark law. Interestingly, the court in Gautam Gambhir v. . &
Judicial protection of color combination trademark in China
JD Supra Law
OCTOBER 19, 2022
A color combination trademark refers to a trademark composed of two or more colors in a certain proportion and in a certain order, which can be registered and protected in China since the amendment of the Trademark Law in 2001.
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Can Common Terms Be Trademarked?
Kashishipr
SEPTEMBER 8, 2021
We know that brands try to make their trademarks as unique and distinctive as possible to attain the highest level of protection under the Trademark Law. ’ Common or generic terms are usually not protected under trademark law. Let us find out some of the ways of trademarking these terms.
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Saving your Mark from Trademark Genericide
Kashishipr
NOVEMBER 3, 2021
Today, several generic terms that we use, such as ‘escalator,’ ‘xerox,’ ‘cellophane,’ sound common but were once protected as trademarks. Consumers stop referring to the trademark as a proper noun for the brand owner’s product but refer to it as a common noun to mean a product category.
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Unconventional Trademarks: Balancing Innovation and Legal Challenges in a Competitive Landscape
Intepat
DECEMBER 4, 2024
Introduction Trademarks serve as identifiers of the source of goods or services, traditionally encompassing logos, names, and slogans. However, as markets grow increasingly innovative, non-traditional marks have emerged, referred to as unconventional trademarks. For example, the specific shade of Tiffany & Co.’s
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Olympic and Retrolympic: Trademark Protection
IP and Legal Filings
NOVEMBER 2, 2021
This case comes in when the Retrolympics applied for the word and the figurative mark Retroolympic at the German Patent and Trademark Office in 2012 (for Nice classes 28 (games and sporting goods); 35 (advertising) and 41 (sporting and cultural activities). IOC is the proprietor of various earlier trademarks involving the word ‘Olympic.’
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Landmark Trademark Battles: Shaping Brand Protection Globally and in India
IP and Legal Filings
SEPTEMBER 12, 2024
The rulings, in turn, drove home that mere association is not sufficient to support a finding of trademark infringement or dilution. It was another case of how hard it is for big brands to defend their marks against light-hearted references where the respective products have different markets. Dongre and Ors. V Whirlpool Co.
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Trademarks vs. Generic Terms: Can Generic Terms be Trademarked?
IP and Legal Filings
AUGUST 29, 2023
Can their names be officially protected under trademark laws?At At first, it might seem a little confusing as Trademarks are like- ‘special signs’ that help us know where products or services come from. Imagine a place where a tea stall named “Chai Chai Chronicles” warmly invites you to enjoy a cup of tea.
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Analysing Trademark Infringement In Light Of Mcdonald’s V. Maccoffee
IP and Legal Filings
SEPTEMBER 19, 2023
Conclusion In conclusion, trademark laws in India provide for the registration and protection of trademarks, as well as the procedures for the infringement and opposition of trademarks. Maccoffee first appeared on IPLF.
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Can QR Codes be Trademarked?
Kashishipr
JUNE 4, 2021
Can we Trademark QR Codes? QR codes by themselves are unable to be trademarked since Trademark Law only covers the things that allow the public to identify your goods and services easily, such as names, logos, slogans, sounds, or colors.
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Roof Afza v. Dil Afza: Finding Meaning in Trademark Protection
SpicyIP
APRIL 4, 2022
Further, trademark law works on the presumption that any association a consumer would make with a particular firm’s mark would purely be limited to the word, sign, symbol, or graphic representation of the mark and not its meaning or any higher-level description of it. Merely having a similar suffix does not constitute infringement.
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Balancing Justice And Order: Interplay Of Section 47, 57, And 124 Of The Trademarks Act, 1999.
IP and Legal Filings
MARCH 11, 2025
Trademark law jurisprudence thus faces a dilemma over the efficient use of procedure and protecting rights. CONCLUSION The Interplay of the Section 47, 57, and 124 of the Act gives a fascinating affair between form and substance throughout the process of trademark adjudication. Diesels Ltd., 2018) 2 SCC 112.
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Some Concepts concerning“the Use of Trademark”in China’s Trademark Practice
JD Supra Law
NOVEMBER 9, 2022
Article 4 of the Trademark Law stipulates that "the use of the trademark referred to in this Law refers to the use of the trademark on goods, goods packaging or containers and goods transaction documents, or the use of the trademark in advertising, exhibitions and other business activities for the identification of the source of goods."
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Unveiling Trademark Dilution from Scratch to Denouement
IP and Legal Filings
NOVEMBER 1, 2023
However, Apple is a well-established and widely recognized brand that invests a considerable amount of money in safeguarding its trademark against any potential dilution. Dilution can be understood as giving the owner of a famous trademark standing to forbid others from using that mark by others to protect its exclusivity.
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Not All is Fair in Aashiqui and War?: Analysing the DHC’s Injunction for Using ‘Aashiqui’ in Super Cassettes’s Film Name
SpicyIP
SEPTEMBER 16, 2024
The Single Judge Bench (SB) consisting of Justice Sanjeev Narula made some intriguing observations regarding the trademarkability of the mark “Aashiqui” as a movie franchise and restraining its use by other entities. After establishing the above, the court proceeded to the question of deceptive similarity, referring to Amritdhara Pharmacy v.
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Competitive Keyword Ad Lawsuit Fails…Despite 236 Potentially Confused Customers–Lerner & Rowe v. Brown Engstrand
Technology & Marketing Law Blog
MAY 22, 2023
Each log entry includes the date of the call and the caller’s name, as well as a column labeled “[w]hat they said referred by.” Assuming each of the 236 references to Lerner & Rowe in the call logs is a confused consumer, the court says that means only about 0.2% clickthrough rate.
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Smells like Luxury, Does it Cost a Trademark Battle?
SpicyIP
AUGUST 31, 2023
While this argument appears compelling in terms of product usage, trademark law places greater emphasis on the “likelihood of confusion” at the time of purchase. However, using another brand name or trademark alone does not amount to disparagement. Let’s explore how confusion may arise, if at all.
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Zara vs. Boungiorno and the possibility (or not) of using third-party trademarks
Garrigues Blog
FEBRUARY 5, 2024
regarding the use of the ZARA trademark. We will examine the impact of the ruling in cases involving the use of third-party trademarks. They claimed the lawfulness of such use under the limitations specified in Article 37 of the Trademark Law, both in its original version and as modified by Directive 2015/2436.
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