Trademarks

Past April 20th, 2016 the Rwandan government has released an Official Gazette Special.

This important document, drafted in Kinyarwanda, French and English, makes effective recently promulgated laws and modifies various IP laws. The main changes are the following:

Since the 8th of June, 2016, the Industrial Property Office of Kosovo, one of the youngest countries in the world, has tighten its requirements for filing applications for protection of trademarks, designs, patents and other intellectual property rights.

A Chinese court has ruled against Apple in a case over the use of the ‘iPhone’ trademark claiming that the Californian company failed to prove the term was “familiar to the public and widely known” at the time of registration. The trademark ‘iPhone’ was registered by the Chinese company Xintong Tiandi Technology Co. in 2007 on the same year the iPhone was launched, although it was not available in China until 2009. The company is a leather manufacturer that commercialises leather goods such as phone cases, purses, handbags and wallets.

The concept of keeping things as ‘simple and concise’ as possible in business and commercial affairs is frequently endorsed by marketing strategists as being the sure proof path to gaining visibility and the attention of the public. However, said strategy also carries an amount of risk when it comes to obtaining a trademark registration.

Since March 29th, 2016 the Registry has begun to clear its backlog of pending applications and oppositions. Until this April 1st, the Registrar's office has abandoned about two hundred thousand applications and twenty thousand oppositions.

The reason why applications are being abandoned is mainly due to non-filing of response to the examination report. The Registrar's office is solely considering responses which were found to be uploaded in Internal module and has failed to consider responses which were filed physically at their office or emailed.

A new Industrial Property Code is now in force in Mozambique – from 31 March 2016. This new Code (henceforth the new IPC) was approved on 31 December 2015 by the Council of Ministers of Mozambique and was published under Decree no. 47/2015. As laid down in Article 2 of the referred Decree, the Mozambican Industrial Property Code of 2006 (from now on 2006 IPC) is expressly repealed and replaced. Further, Decree no. 21/2009, establishing the regime of Appellations of Origin and Geographical Indications, is also repealed and this matter is now provided for in the new IPC.

Changes to European Union’s trademark system set forth by Regulation no. 2015/2424 of the European Parliament and the Council are entering into force on March 23, 2016.

Modifications include new names for Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market (OHIM), from now on the “European Union Intellectual Property Office” (EUIPO), and for the “Community Trademark” (CTM), henceforward the “European Union Trademark” (EUTM).

Besides these new names, other changes include, among others:

18 year old TV celebrity and socialite Kylie Jenner who has acquired fame by appearances in the reality TV show “Keeping Up with the Kardashians” sought to have her name protected for advertising and endorsement purposes. Jenner applied to claim ownership of the name “Kylie” in order to secure the expansion of her cosmetics and clothing collections.

In a decision dated July 6, 2015, the Spanish Supreme Court, confirmed a judgment by Burgos Court of Appeal, which declared that the use of the corporate name “AUTORAM”, by the defendant, infringed the trademark and two trade names “AUTORAMA”, owned by the plaintiff, for services in Class 35.

For the Supreme Court it was clear that the similarity between "AUTORAM" and "AUTORAMA" could give the impression to the consumers that the services have the same commercial origin or that at least, there is a link between the companies.

The Department of Intellectual Property of the Ministry of Science and Technology of the People’s Republic of Laos has issued a notice in which it informs that it will be allowing Multi-Class applications for trademarks as from the 1st of February of 2016.

The Notice No. 57/MOST.DIP. underlines the advantages of applying a multi-class application compared to the previous single-class system. Such as: