Around the IP Blogs

IPLens blog looked at several recent decisions of the Court of Milan, to see how the CJEU Cofemel decision has impacted on the copyright protection of industrial designs [see also an IPKat post the Kiko case, where the Italian Supreme Court applied Cofemel to Kiko store layout]. As Kat readers may recall, in the Cofemel decision, the Court of Justice declined to impose any requirements, beyond being qualified as a “work”, for the existence of copyright protection. This position is not easily reconcilable with the Italian copyright law requirement of “creative character and artistic value” for work of industrial designs. IPlens discussed how the Court of Milan struggles to reconcile the two approaches.

SpicyIP featured a post on the copyright ownership in State Board Textbooks. The post looks into how different copyright policies in different states within India impede access to knowledge and calls for consistency among such copyright policies across State Boards.

Munich I Regional Court has created a third patent litigation division. Both Juve Patent and Foss Patents blogs commented on this move. The new division will begin its operations in August 2021. It should enable a reduction in the case load of the two other patent divisions, with the Munich Regional Court increasingly becoming a demonstrably preferred venue for patent litigation.

The Fashion Law blog reported on the on-going trade mark feud between Kanye West’s Yeezy brand and the US-based retail corporation Walmart. The current battle is over a U.S. trade mark application for a stylized sun rays graphic filed by Yeezy and opposed by Walmart on the ground of an earlier registered trade mark.

Non-fungible tokens (NTFs) are more and more discussed in connection with their IP implications. The IP Finance blog suggests that NFTs might be used by young promising athletes to finance their prospective careers. For example, electronic “playing cards” might be sold as an NFT, to later gain value as the athlete’s career unfolds.