The latest Luxury Law Jurisdictional Comparison Guide has been released. The Guide provides jurisdictional-specific answers and insights into how luxury businesses can protect their brands. It's written by IP legal experts from around the world and focuses on trade mark law, copyright, designs, privacy, product placement and the protection of corporate image and reputation. Rosie Burbidge wrote the UK chapter - available here. More information on the guide can be found here.

Although EU law is no longer binding on the UK, in practice, the laws remain the same and what happens in the EU courts will continue to have a bearing on UK practice for some time to come. That means that we still need to keep up to date with the latest decisions of the European Court of Justice and the EU General Court. The General Court is a particular hotbed of IP activity as it considers a large number of appeals from EUIPO concerning EU trade marks and registered Commun

We recently reported on the Litecoin case where an application to register a trade mark was found to constitute passing off (see blog post here). Whilst cryptocurrency and celestial beings may not, at first glance, have a lot in common, a recent IPEC decision over the mark ARCHANGEL ALCHEMY raised some similar issues. Both cases highlight the importance of clearing a new trade mark application before filing or using the trade mark. This was a dispute between two spiritual and

Good news for anyone with international trade mark plans On 28 September, 2021, the United Arab Emirates Government and WIPO announced that the UAE will be joining the Madrid System. The UAE will be the 109th country to join the Madrid System (which now covers 125 countries). The Madrid Protocol will enter into force for UAE on 28 December, 2021. This is a big deal for brand owners looking for trade mark protection in the UAE, as filing costs have historically been particular

We’ve all become more conscious of climate change and other environmental issues over the past 25 years – and that can be seen in the increase of “green” EU trade mark applications filed in that period. Research findings A recent study by EUIPO (Green EU trade marks: Analysis of goods and services specifications, 1996-2020) found that terms related to the protection of the environment and sustainability (such as photovoltaic, solar heating, wind energy and recycling) increase