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Showing posts from March, 2014

Can You Lose Your Trade Mark? Sega Just Have!

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  Sega, one of the worlds most famous arcade game producers have lost their rights to ' Shenmue ' after a extended period of inactivity. Trade mark registrations can technically be made to last forever, so long as you keep up to date with it. Sega have recently shown what happens when you leave a trademark inactive. Under section 8 of the Trademark Act a company must show “continued use” or “excusable nonuse” of registered marks, if they do not want to lose their rights. This must be done in the fifth and sixth years of the trademark’s life, and again during the ninth and tenth. Sega appears to have failed to do this the second time round. It could also mean that Sega didn't give enough evidence they are still using the ' Shenmue ' trademark to warrant ownership, but it could also mean they have no intention of returning to the series. This is one of the ways in which you can lose your trademark rights, to learn the other take a look at our blog post 

Online Trademark Rights

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  There have been several cases over the past few months of companies making cases for trademark infringement based on the bidding of keyword searches on Google Adwords and other search engines. (Google Adwords removed their policy of excluding trademarked keywords in their bidding in 2008.)   For example you may have heard of the cases of Lush vs Amazon, or Interflora vs  Marks and Spencer. In both cases the case made was that the companies (Amazon and M&S) bid on keywords containing their trade mark within Google’s AdWords service in order to trigger results on their site.  Google Adwords allows you to purchase keywords used in their search engine so that a sponsored link appears whenever internet users search for that term.   The confusion lies that if I were to search Interflora and Marks and Spencer came up, I may falsely believe that they are a part of the same chain. And that is exactly what trademarks are for: protecting consumers from confusion.  The same goes for Amazon a

Calls for Community Trade Mark Renewal Fees to be Cut

 As reported on World Trade Mark Review, there have been calls on OHIM to cut trade mark renewal fees. These exceed filing fees, are often more than a thousand pounds, and requires no examiner time or deliberation. Simply the press of a button. The prospects of such a voluntary reduction in budget by a part of the EU machinery does, though, appear slim. For more see http://www.worldtrademarkreview.com/daily/detail.aspx?g=e579d21c-efb5-4384-a8f8-83131f9074b5