Posts under ‘trademarks’

When a key player in the Government’s plans to strengthen the IP framework, encourages business owners to file their own trade marks, explaining this is to help them afford trade mark registration, I wonder what’s going on. Many lawyers educate the public about the value of taking legal advice.  So, it is somewhat surprising for [...]

Back in 2009 eBay won a court case against L’Oreal over the sale of counterfeit goods on its website. The High Court in the UK ruled that the online marketplace, eBay, was not responsible for fake goods being sold on its website, but that it should do more to help prevent any trademark infringement.   The case was [...]

A key to differentiating a business is having an offering or a way of doing business that is unique to you, so you stand out from your competitors.  See my personal blog for differentiating a law firm Your differentiating proposition effectively says to consumers that buying from you will give them a specific benefit. This [...]

We have been keeping an eye on developments in the dispute over the APP STORE mark.  A new chapter in this interesting saga has begun. The challenge against Apple is bringing in more supporters and expanding to other jurisdictions. To recap, in our first blog we explained how Microsoft applied to the US Patent and [...]

How safe is your twitter account username? Today I discovered that Twitter transferred the account #girlgeeks to the trade mark owner of the name even though the latter had only registered a logo mark incorporating the words (see image) a year ago.  A logo mark does not give exclusive rights over the word mark. What’s [...]

As explained in this press release we saw a need to offer a ‘virtual trade mark registration’ service for law firms due to the SRA Conduct Rules 8 and 9 (which prohibit fee sharing with non lawyers and regulate referral fees). So, if a law firm’s clients need a trademark it is not straightforward for [...]

Last week Azrights announced the launch of its trademark registration white labelling solution for law firms.  It is the first comprehensive trademark white labelling service for UK law firms. UK Regulatory considerations The impetus behind it was the Solicitors’ Code of Conduct Rules 8 and 9 which prohibit fee sharing with non lawyers, and regulate [...]

EasyJet has now settled a two-year long dispute with its investor and founder Stelios Haji-Ioannou over the use of the EASY’ brand name. EasyJet has finally managed to sort out a deal with Sir Stellios to end the long-running dispute.  This enables easyJet to continue using their brand name for their airline and other services [...]

Businesses are often surprised to learn that trademarks, unlike domain or company names, do not have to be the same to prevent others from using or registering them. Similar names are also covered. Some interesting examples of how trade mark protection may extend to similar names are Facebook, the Easy Group, and McDonalds.

ky has apparently been battling against Skype for the past 5 years over the ‘Sky’ part of their name. Sky claims that its rights in the ‘Sky’ name are infringed by Skype, and that people are confused into believing them to be part of the same company.