A recent case in The Netherlands shows an important difference between trade mark practice and registered designs. Controversially, OHIM treats black-and-white trade marks as just that (whereas most practitioners used to believe that a registration in black-and-white covered all colours), but a registered Community design presented in black-and-white protects the owner against use of the design in any colour: Case T-68/10 Sphere Time v OHIM, para 82 (General Court), followed on 2 September by the District Court in The Hague in Wibit-Sports GmbH v Aquaparx (thanks to the Class 99 blog for the information). That seems hardly surprising, and is only really noteworthy because of the stupid rule about trade marks. It's another matter if colour is important for the novelty or individual character of the design (in other words, it's a feature of the design that the owner wants to protect), and if the design is filed in colour it is right to assume that the colour is important and to limit protection accordingly, in line with 'traditional' trade mark practice. But if the registered design protects the shape of the product (which traditionally is what design protection has done, of course) the colour used by the infringer should make no difference. Actually, an infringer trying to use this as a defence is grasping at straws, rather like a design owner who claims that unregistered Community design right has been infringed ....
This remains, however, a topical issue with the Trunki appeal on its way to the Supreme Court. There, the Court of Appeal took the view that the striking colour combination which was shown in the RCD was significant, and not present in the accused products. If only they had filed in B&W. But the Court of Justice's decision in the KitKat case (a trade marks case, though a shape trade mark and therefore right on the boundary of the designs field) tells us that features of a product may only be protected by trade mark registration if they are used by the consumer, to the exclusion of other indicia, as an indication of origin, which strikes me as being on all fours with the Trunki design case. However, I am perhaps digressing a little, and the KitKat case is exciting enough to merit separate consideration.
This remains, however, a topical issue with the Trunki appeal on its way to the Supreme Court. There, the Court of Appeal took the view that the striking colour combination which was shown in the RCD was significant, and not present in the accused products. If only they had filed in B&W. But the Court of Justice's decision in the KitKat case (a trade marks case, though a shape trade mark and therefore right on the boundary of the designs field) tells us that features of a product may only be protected by trade mark registration if they are used by the consumer, to the exclusion of other indicia, as an indication of origin, which strikes me as being on all fours with the Trunki design case. However, I am perhaps digressing a little, and the KitKat case is exciting enough to merit separate consideration.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment