Category:
Branding, Trade Marks, Designs & Patents

Who’ll win the Crown? Packer vs Intercontinental in dispute over ‘Crown Resorts’

The long running dispute between James Packer’s Crown Resorts group and the InterContinental Hotels Group intensified recently with IHG launching an opposition to Crown Resorts’ philanthropic arm trading as ‘Crown Resorts Foundation’. At heart is a dispute over Packer’s use of the Crown Resorts name. Back in 2013, Crown Limited changed its name to Crown...
Image rights can get messi!
Barcelona football star, Lionel Messi, was recently sentenced to 21 months in prison and fined the equivalent of $2.95 million after being found guilty of tax fraud. Messi allegedly used different offshore companies to evade taxes on income made from Messi’s “image rights”. In Spain there is a constitutional right to one’s own image. This...
Read More
Thanks for nothing, Citibank: New case raises questions over the grant of trade marks for everyday words
Citigroup has commenced action in the Federal Court in New York against US telecommunications giant AT&T, claiming the telecom’s new “AT&T thanks” customer rewards program infringes trademark rights connected with its own well-established “ThankYou” rewards points program. Back in 2004, Citigroup began using the term “thankyou” to promote a customer loyalty and rewards program, and...
Read More
Licensing of samples v artist freedom
1970s German electronic music band, Kraftwerk, were considered the pioneers of electronic music with their revolutionary distinctive minimalistic sound combining repetitive rhythms and catchy melodies with simplified lyrics often sung through a vocoder. Kraftwerk have been compared to The Beatles in terms of their influence on pop music. The sounds and beats they invented essentially...
Read More
Axl Rose’s Big Issue: Singer files DMCA complaint with Google over unflattering pictures
Axl Rose, Guns N’ Roses frontman, has sought to employ the take down provisions of the US’s DMCA – or Digital Millennium Copyright Act – to demand Google remove certain concert images of him from their search engine. While it seems at least part of Rose’s motivation is removing unflattering pictures from circulation, he is...
Read More
Spoiler alert
In 2003, Steve Carbon (‘Steve’), a blogger from Dallas, started a newsletter that leaked reports from the show the Bachelor and the Bachelorette that had not yet been aired, even revealing the finale of one of the show’s seasons.  After some triumphant spills reaching an audience of millions, RealitySteve.com was born and dedicated to spoiling...
Read More
Three’s a crowd – Tinder sues threesome App 3nder
It appears Match Group, the owners of dating app Tinder, have or are shortly intending to launch trade mark infringement action in the UK against new threesome rival app 3nder. Tinder reportedly issued a cease and desist letter to 3nder in December 2015 demanding that 3nder shut down its website and remove all references to...
Read More
1 2 3 4 5 11