Google is the world’s most famous search engine. Google's mission is to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” The major portion of Google's profit is through its highly successful program AdWords, which provides advertisers advertising space for related searches. AdWords is a program that helps companies to advertise and promote their products or services on Google’s websites. The program works by providing highly relevant ads and suggestions to third party users when they enter keywords…
This post will discuss another trademark infringement case in the ecommerce market in India.
Recently, in October this year, Eicher Motors Ltd, which manufactures and sells the Royal Enfield bike, filed an infringement suit against Saurabh Katar and Kuldeep Singh, for infringing their trademark ENFIELD, ROYAL ENFIELD and BULLET. The suit filed before the Delhi High Court, also claimed infringement of copyright of the logos and the website of Eicher Motors Ltd. Eicher alleged that Saurabh Katar and Kuldeep Singh were…
One can always see a lot of advertisements, while performing a google search or just about any search on other search engines. Advertisements, and more recently, keyword advertising are a major source of revenue generation for search engines. The case that we are about to discuss, is something that nobody ever anticipated to happen.
Multi Time Machine Inc, (MTM) manufactures watches, specifically special ops watches and high-end tactical watches. It sells them on its own website and through its various…
This post briefs three copyright cases that provide insights into copyright issues with respect to content posted on Social Media platforms.
Scrabble v. Scrabulous
In 2008, two Indians Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla, launched a Facebook App called 'Scrabulous.' It was a word game similar to Scrabble. Initially Mattel, and later Hasbrow, right holders of the Scrabble game sued the Agarwalla brothers for both copyright and trade mark infringement at the Delhi High Court.
After reviewing the facts, the Delhi High…
In furtherance of the previous post about the BMW Emblem case , the current post is regarding the luxury automobile manufacturer, Bentley Motors Inc, which prevailed in a trademark infringement lawsuit against the makers and installers of kits that transform more modest vehicles into virtual clones of the Bentley.
The crux of the issue here is, whether producing and installing external body kits to inexpensive vehicles to seem similar to high-end luxury automobiles constitutes trademark infringement and dilution of the…
This post discusses the scope of protection of black and white trade mark registrations in infringement proceedings.
The OHIM (Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market) made the announcement, on 15 April, 2014, about a new common practice for trademarks registered in black and white. The OHIM and the participating national offices have now issued a Common Communication, together with details of the implementation process.
As per the new Common Practice, a black & white (or grayscale) mark will only be considered…
This post brings to light some of the Indian cases dealing with trademark infringement in the automobile industry.
The first case that would be discussed here is that of Tata Motors. The story starts in mid 2014, when Tata Motors approached the Court of Chief Metropolitan Magistrate, Vidya Prakash, complaining of some unknown persons engaged in the business of manufacturing, trading, distributing, storing and selling counterfeit and spurious products under the trademark of ‘Tata Motors’.
Tata Motors informed the Court…
Brands – the backbone of Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) valuation
William Shakespeare once said “What's in a name?”
For FMCG companies, it’s all about the product names that consumers identify from the TV advertisements or trips to the supermarket. It is critical to your business because:
It’s a marketing tool; brand recall leads to greater sales and profitability
It strengthens your licensing opportunities and therefore revenue from distributors/partners
It increases your company’s valuation, leading to…
This post exhibits the statistics of IP litigation in India in the past decade.
The following table displays the statistics that were arrived at after conducting a search on Manupatra . It tabulates the estimated number of decisions passed by the Supreme Court and High Courts with respect to patents, trademarks and copyrights in the past decade.
IP Decisions Passed by SC and HCs from 2004 – 2014
Year
Number of Decided Cases for Patent
Number of Decided Cases for Trademark
Number of…
The American presidential race has always been interesting, and the present one is no exception. Undoubtedly the most interesting candidate of all is Donald Trump. The highly opinionated, often loud-mouthed star of The Apprentice, who finds it hard to stay away from the spotlight is in the news again. This time Donald Trump is ‘firing’ a politically oriented clothing website which has been using Trump’s trademarked name in its domain name.
The domain name in question, Stoptrump.us, sells t-shirts and…