Areas of Law

Trademark protection for special quality? – Quality mark

Trademark protection for special quality? – Quality mark

You want to draw attention to the sustainability or exceptional quality of your products or services by means of a quality mark that may only be used with your consent? Be careful if you hope to achieve this via a trade mark.

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Failed extension of protection with pattern mark – adidas

Failed extension of protection with pattern mark – adidas

Who wouldn’t want a simple logo for their company that also best embodies the company’s goodwill while being recognised everywhere? adidas is the owner of such a logo. You know, the three stripes. However, adidas has failed in its attempt to extend the three-stripe protection.

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Trade mark for simple figurative signs – adidas

Trade mark for simple figurative signs – adidas

Under what conditions can simple figurative signs be protected as trade marks? Even 12,000 pages of evidence of use were insufficient to prove the registrability of an additional adidas three-stripe mark in this important case.

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Competing offers on Amazon – Ortlieb

Competing offers on Amazon – Ortlieb

If you enter your brand on amazon, also appears a variety of third-party products. This is what happened when you entered the Ortlieb brand. Is your brand being used to illegally advertise for others?

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Brand violation by online marketplace – Posterlounge

Brand violation by online marketplace – Posterlounge

After a user enters a trade mark into Google’s search engine, they are directed to a results list containing, among other things, an online marketplace on which third parties sell competing products. Does this programming of the online marketplace infringe the trade mark?

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Deception by registered trademark symbol ® – grill master

Deception by registered trademark symbol ® – grill master

A caterer had the idea of registering ‘grill meister’ [‘grill master’] as a brand for his barbecue and beer products, as well as for his catering. He gave his brand a simple design and as a special feature the registered trademark symbol ®. However, the caterer was very surprised when the Federal Court of Justice certified his trade mark as not only being unable to be protected, but also deceptive.

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