Waterfront partner, Matthew Harris, acting as advocate has secured a win in a contested hearing before the United Kingdom Intellectual Property Office in a recent trade mark invalidity case. US company Andover Healthcare Inc had sought to invalidate the KO-FLEX trade mark of Urgo Limited for bandages by claiming prior rights in the term COFLEX under the law of passing off. The case was unusual in that the hearing officer had to consider the scope of Andover’s rights in the late 1990s and this required a consideration of the impact of the Medical Devices Regulations 1994 on market practice.
The decision was issued on 4 February 2015, but only now become publically available on the UK IPO website
A recent EU trade mark application for the word mark, PUT PUTIN IN, has been refused by the European Union Intellectual Property Office on the grounds of being contrary to public policy or to accepted principles of morality. While a fairly straightforward decision, this is a timely reminder…
Late yesterday UK time, it was reported that a lawyer for Twitter had sent a letter to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg complaining about Meta’s new Threads app. Twitter claimed that it “has serious concerns that Meta Platforms (Meta) has engaged in systematic, wilful and unlawful misappropriation of Twitter’s trade secrets and other intellectual property”.