In a symbolic win for Indigenous artists, the Federal Court of Australia has recently ordered a seller of fake Indigenous-style souvenirs to pay AU$2.3 million in pecuniary penalties for contraventions of the misleading and deceptive conduct provisions of the Australian
2019
Confusion: More than just the sum of its parts
In claims for trademark infringement and passing off, plaintiff success is determined by the ability to establish confusion. Section 6 of the Trade-marks Act (the Act) provides a non-exhaustive list of elements to be considered by the court, namely…
Calidad v Seiko – defining the scope of the implied licence
One of the more controversial questions in patent law is the extent to which a patentee may continue to exercise control over patent-protected goods after their sale. This question invokes competing tensions between the rights of the patentee and the…
The highs and lows of the 2019 Australian IP Report

The highs and lows of the 2019 Australian IP Report
To mark World Intellectual Property Day, IP Australia released its seventh edition of the Australian Intellectual Property Report 2019 (Report). The Report provides a snapshot of the …
Ghost of rulings past: why virtual designs are not yet covered by Australian IP law


Virtual or non-physical designs, which include graphical user interfaces and screen icons, are designs that impact the appearance of a product through software displayed on an electronic screen. Many of these designs have become ubiquitous in our everyday lives. Well-known…
Is this really the end of the three-stripe trade mark ?

In its decision dated 19 June 2019 (Case T-307/17), the General Court of the European Union has confirmed the invalidity of Adidas’ European Union trade mark, which consists of three parallel equidistant parallel stripes of identical width applied on a…
Internet (almost) killed the video star: Federal Court grants orders to block ‘ripping’ of music videos

In the age of the internet, music videos have persisted on MTV and numerous other television outlets although they have to an extent been challenged by other forms of high-brow entertainment available. Many of them involve house inspections or the
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U.S. Supreme Court and “Scandalous” Trademarks

Two years after the United States Supreme Court struck down the ban on disparaging trademarks, the Supreme Court has now struck down the Lanham Act’s similar ban on the registration of scandalous and immoral trademarks at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Iancu v. Brunetti, No. 18-302, 588 U.S. _____ (2019). On June 24, 2019, Justice Kagan delivered the majority opinion of the Court, which voted 6-3 to strike the provision as an unconstitutional viewpoint-based restriction on speech that violates the First Amendment.
Copyright, “fair use,” and educational institutions

On May 23, 2019, a federal jury unanimously found that the Houston Independent School District willfully infringed 36 of DynaStudy’s copyrighted study guides, and awarded $9.2 million dollars. (DynaStudy, Inc. v. Houston Independent School District, Case No. 4:16-cv-01442 (S.D. Tex. May 23, 2019) (verdict, document #316). As this case illustrates, “educational” use is a very narrow exception to the copyright laws. New technologies make copying easier than ever, but the jury verdict demonstrates the damages can be unlimited.
PACTE law : Key provisions in the field of industrial property

PACTE law : Key provisions in the field of industrial property
The French law for the growth and transformation of companies, (the PACTE law, from its French acronym), was definitively adopted by the French Parliament on 11 April 2019.…