Intellectual property
Sincere flattery or blatant affrontery?
Copy theft is rife on the web. There’s so much of it, you have to be selective about what you lose sleep over. Let’s leave aside substantial, deliberate infringements for the time being and look at the lazy copier. You know the type: Wish I’d written that page/constructed that set of links. I’ll just grab […]
Intellectual Property: Enforcement Directive
The European Parliament has voted to approve the controversial Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive by a vote of 330 to 151. While the law was originally drawn up to target professional pirates, criminals and counterfeiters who make copies of goods such as football shirts or CDs, the directive was later expanded to cover any infringement […]
Intellectual Property: Online market for second hand trade marks
The Trademark Catalogue has gone live, providing an online market for brand owners to buy and sell trade mark rights over the internet. The aim of the service is to enable the owners of dormant trade marks and associated domain names to sell their rights efficiently and safely and save potential buyers the cost and […]
Internet: Trade mark not abused by meta tag and search ads
The Court of Appeal ruled on 3 March that recruitment site totaljobs.com had not infringed a trade mark that had been used as a meta tag in the source code of totaljobs’ web site and in paid adverts on search engines. Recruitment agency Reed Executive plc sued publishers Reed Business Information Ltd and others (including […]
