Home » Category: 'Design' (Page 2)

Design

EU Moving Toward New Trade-Mark Regime

The European Commission has proposed amendments to the Community Trade Mark (CTM) Regulation and Trade Marks Directive. The primary function is to harmonize EU member trade-mark laws. This bureaucratic hygiene aim – which resulted in a mixture of trade-mark rights expansion and contraction – stands in contrast to the current, controversial and (in my opinion) […]

The copyright claws come out in EU catwalk photo battle

Tout arrive en France, especially for folks following recent intellectual property news. The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) released a key judgment in January in a case that pitted copyright against freedom of expression.

2012 IP Year in Review: Hollywood Couldn’t Make an Action Movie this Good

Giuseppina D’Agostino is the Founder and Director of IP Osgoode, the Founder and Director of the IP Intensive Program, and an Associate Professor at Osgoode Hall Law School. 2012 was an action-packed year in the world of intellectual property law. There were flurries of reports, decisions, and new legislation that confronted many core principles of […]

Artwork to Ashes, Brands to Dust: Australia’s Tobacco Plain Packaging Act Held Constitutionally Valid

Put this in your pipe and smoke it: The High Court of Australia recently ruled that the Tobacco Plain Packaging Act withstands constitutional scrutiny, in JT International SA v Commonwealth of Australia. Retailers and smokers will thus soon find themselves scrutinizing things as well, in order to distinguish between identical cigarette packages stripped of all branding and trade-marks.

Third time a charm? The Innovative Design Protection Act in the face of The Knockoff Economy.

On Friday November 1, 2012, the American University, Washington College of Law Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property (PIJIP) hosted the Inaugural Peter Jaszi Distinguished Lecture on Intellectual Property, featuring Christopher Sprigman, Professor at the University of Virginia Law School and co-author of the book The Knockoff Economy: How Imitation Sparks Innovation.

Clash of the Tartans…

In Abraham Moon & Sons Ltd v. Thornber and others, the Patents County Court (“PCC”) in London held that a firm called “Art of the Loom” and its partners (“defendants”) had infringed Abraham Moon’s (“claimant”) copyright in “Skye Sage”. This decision is noteworthy because it serves as an example of how copyright law relates to the […]

Glass Half Empty for Industrial Design Protection in Canada?

The re-posting of this analysis is part of a collaboration with Ashlee Froese.   An interesting decision was recently issued by Canada’s Federal Court, which has sparked some interest in the intellectual property arena: Bodum USA, Inc. and PI Design AG v. Trudeau Corporation (1889) Inc.