IP Quick Intellect

It's important that companies undertake their own due diligence and conduct the relevant searches for trade marks, patent and designs to avoid infringements.

In our latest IP Quick Intellect Blog, Principal Lawyer Melissa McGrath outlines the latest on the Booking.com case and if adding the .com extension will overcome a generic obstacle for registration.

The IP Safe Harbour has recently been repealed from Australia's competition laws. In order to avoid monetary penalties and ensure your business is compliant with competition laws, all your commercial agreements should be reviewed.

Up until recently there had been significant uncertainty surrounding the fate of trade mark owners post-Brexit, although regulations are beginning to take shape, and the actions of the UK government and the UK Intellectual Property Office look to be removing some of this uncertainty.

In 2017, Coleman Greig published a piece concerning a dispute between Aussie brand Bega and US giant Kraft, over the use of the 'peanut butter trade dress' of the iconic peanut butter jars with yellow lids. This blog comes as an update to that article, following the handing down of the decision in Kraft Foods Group Brands LLC v Bega Cheese Limited (No 8) [2019] FCA 593.

If you or your business have contracted a third-party to either create or develop a piece of software for you, it may come as a surprise to know that you may not actually own that source coding - even if the work was undertaken based on your ideas, under your instruction and you paid for it! 

Irish fast food restaurant Supermac's recently tasted sweet revenge over McDonald's, when the European Union Intellectual Property Office issued a surprise decision to revoke the fast food giant's 'BIG MAC' trade mark registration from the EUIPO in its entirety, with respect to a range of food items and restaurant services.

The decision in the case of Beats Electronics LLC v Strategies Unleashed Pty Ltd [2017] ATMO 6 is an example of how social media can be used to promote and protect a brand, and should be noted as a reminder to include social media activity as evidence in any intellectual property dispute, where relevant.

Is it possible to claim the design of a glass box?  This question hit the music world earlier this month, when in early November 2018, soon after Kanye West and Kid Cudi performed their set at the Camp Flog Gnaw festival in LA, Grammy award winning New Zealand musician Lorde took to her Instagram account to accuse Kanye West and Kid Cudi of stealing her set design: a suspended glass box.  

As the two cases discussed in this article highlight, it is incredibly important for businesses to monitor their competitors, and if they wish to protect their intellectual property, to ensure that they take timely legal action to do so.

Leading Swedish apparel brand H&M has yet again been caught up in social media controversy following an advertisement posted to the brand’s Instagram channel. It was just last month that the brand was forced to deal with their first ‘face-palm’ moment of 2018, when the online listing of one of their children’s hoodies was criticised by many for being racially insensitive - leading to H&M’s brand ambassador, The Weeknd, severing all ties with the company.

While “copying may be the sincerest form of flattery,” social media ensures that “cheaters never prosper.” Hopeful First Lady, Melania Trump's recent speech on the opening night of the Republican National Convention raised some eyebrows…

It's common for businesses to incorporate descriptive qualities of the services that they provide into their brand and there are no laws preventing the use of descriptive terms in business names. However, it is difficult to secure a trade mark over a descriptive word or phrase in the absence of other elements to make it distinctive to your brand.

Do you find your business relying more on social media than traditional marketing to build awareness of your brand and to enhance your brand reputation? If so, you're not alone.

Many businesses engage in social media as a means on establishing an online presence and building a direct line of communication with their client base. With 645,750,000 active registered users, Twitter is one of the main platforms that companies choose to get the word out about their business. So, do the standard intellectual property (IP) rules apply to Twitter? After all, how much trouble can you get into with 140 characters? Answer: A lot.

Given the ease with which people can tweet, filter, gram, re-gram, upload and share digital images on social media platforms, many have no hesitation in stealing someone else’s original image and claiming it as their own. The perils of copyright infringement via social media have once again been highlighted as a result of Samsung’s #LiveInTheMoment photo competition run via Statigram, Instagram and Facebook. Hengki Koentjoro’s original image pictured above.

Irrespective of whether you are a start up business or a multi-million dollar corporation, engaging in social media is considered common practice for many businesses these days. There are many PR benefits (and risks) involved when a business makes the decision to jump on the social media band wagon. The primary advantage of engaging in social media is often considered to be the direct and immediate access that an organisation has with its target audience. This can undoubtedly be the quickest (and most cost effective) way to gain direct consumer feedback about particular products and services or simply a great way to help a business build its brand.

The recent social media dispute between travel blogger, Tuner Barr, and Swiss based global recruitment giant, Adecco Group has highlighted some important Intellectual Property (IP) issues that can arise in the social media sphere. Barr accused Adecco of ripping off his IP in its campaign entitled “Around the world in 80 Jobs”. Barr’s main gripe is that he had previously created a website called Around the World in 80 Jobs. Importantly Barr had never registered the name “Around the World in 80 Jobs” as a trade mark in Australia or internationally.