The High Court has upheld a UK IPO finding that the registration of a UK trade mark for RED DAWG should be refused under Section 5(3) of the Trade Marks Act, as it would take unfair advantage of the earlier mark RED BULL. The application to register RED DAWG was filed by Monster Energy Company, which appealed the UK IPO finding to the High Court. The Court’s judgment was published on 12 August 2022 and the case is Monster Energy Company v Red Bull GmbH [2022] EWHC 2155 (Ch) (

Trade mark infringement, honest concurrent use and so-called “moribund marks” were the focus of an interim decision in a case concerning alleged infringement of the claimant's trade marks STEALTH and STEALTH VR (stylised) for gaming headsets: ABP Technology Ltd v Voyetra Turtle Beach, Inc. & Anor (Rev1). ABP Technology claimed that the defendants’ use of the STEALTH sign for video game headsets infringed its UK trade marks registered in relation to audio headsets for playing

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

The estate of JRR Tolkien has won a UDRP action against the registrant of the domain name jrrtoken.com, which has been used for a website relating to cryptocurrency. Tolkien, the author of books including The Hobbit and The Lord of The Rings trilogy, died in 1973. The Tolkien Estate owns trade marks for JRR Tolkien, including in the UK and US. It brought the UDRP complaint against Matthew Jensen, who registered the domain name on 26 February 2021. The website at the disputed

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