Trademarks

Milan Fashion Week and Fashion Law Trends: Textile Waste and Circular Fashion

By Arianna Angilletta and Chiara D’Onofrio Nowadays, the textile sector represents the second most polluting industry in the world after the oil industry and is responsible for 20% of global water waste – due to the various processes the products undergo such as dyeing and finishing – and 10% of carbon dioxide emissions (more than […]

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Milan Fashion Week and Fashion Law Trends: Is Metaverse the New Fashion Revolution for IP?

Neal Stephenson coined the term “metaverse” in his 1992 novel Snow Crash, where it referred to a 3D virtual world inhabited by avatars of real people, sometimes facilitated by the use of virtual and augmented reality devices, which would blur the barrier between online and offline.

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The makeup of protection of a makeup store layout: a missed chance to apply the Cofemel decision?

By Valentina Mazza and Andrea Michelangeli In our fashion law predictions for 2020 (available here), we anticipated Italian case-law following the trend set by the CJEU in the Cofemel decision (for the illustration of the case, see our previous post here) by making it easier to access copyright protection in Italy. No magic wand, but

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Milan Fashion Week and Fashion Law Trends – Legal Fakes: the Fabulous Destiny of Copycats?

By Elena Varese and Lara Mastrangelo The Milan Fashion Week has just started and from today we are glad to host some highlights on the major fashion law trends of this season. Today we start with the analysis of the legal fake phenomenon.

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Latest news: Sky v. Skykick, CJEU decision overturns Advocate General’s opinion

By Andrea Michelangeli and Annamaria Algieri On 29 January 2020, the CJEU issued its judgement on the Sky v. Skykick case, one of the most awaited trademark decisions of the past years. As anticipated in our previous article posted last October 2019 (you can find it here: https://blogs.dlapiper.com/iptitaly/2019/10/sky-v-skykick-or-on-the-meaning-of-computer-software/), the dispute came up when Sky, active

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A new episode in the Rubik’s Cube saga

Rubik’s Brand v EUIPO – Simba Toys (Case T-601/17) by Laura Gastaldi, Lara Mastrangelo and Alessandra Tozzi Whether you are from the 20th century or a millennial, the Rubik’s cube will immediately bring you back in time. Indeed, such multicolored three-dimensional puzzle is one of the most popular toys of all times, with more than

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Sky v. Skykick, or on the meaning of “computer software”

On 16 October 2019, the Advocate General Tanchev issued his opinion in relation to one of the most interesting trademark disputes of the recent years, waiting for a preliminary ruling judgement before the CJEU.

The dispute involves Sky plc, Sky International AG and Sky UK Limited (“Sky”), active in the satellite and digital television broadcast service, against Skykick UK Limited and Skykick Inc (“Skykick”), which supply cloud migration information technology services.

According to the results of the main proceedings held before the High Court of Justice of the UK, Sky sued Skykick for having allegedly infringed its EU trademarks consisting in the word “SKY” through the use of the sign “Skykick” and its variants. Skykick defended its position by denying the trademark infringement alleged by Sky and by counterclaiming that Sky’s trademarks were invalidly registered, on the two grounds that (i) the specifications of goods and services lack clarity and precision and (ii) the relevant trademark applications were consequently made in bad faith.

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Milan Fashion Week and Fashion Law Trends – Fashion and Parody: a trendy combo?

The retail and fashion sectors need to deal with new legal issues due to the adoption of IoT technologies as a consequence of the rapid digital revolution of the industry.

The “wave” of the Internet of Things is heavily impacting the retail sector leading to new legal issues that have never been experienced by most fashion brands, and in general retail companies.

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Milan Fashion Week and Fashion Law Trends –  Monograms: just letters or powerful trademarks?

By Elena Varese e Lara Mastrangelo The Milan Fashion Week has just started and from today we are glad to host for the second time some highlights on the major fashion law trends of this season. “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet” used to claim Juliet in the famous Shakespeare’s play,

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Milan Fashion Week and Fashion Law Trends − New brand identity in the fashion industry: is the “sans-serification” the right move? 

In recent months many fashion companies have been restyling their brands by simplifying and minimizing their visual impact: big fashion industries are dropping unique fonts, words and design features − which until now have significantly contributed to differentiate their brands from their competitors’ ­− in favor of most popular and common fonts, such as sans-serif.

“Less is more”, we may say.

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Milan Fashion Week and Fashion Law Trends: Use and protection of fashion archives

The Milan Fashion Week has just started and from today we are glad to host some highlights on the major fashion law trends of this season.

Heritage is one of the major assets a fashion company holds and the ultimate tendency of this Fashion Week is to revamp old creations from the maison’s archives.

Firstly, it should be assessed whether the fashion company can use its own archives. This seems to be a plain question, however, in practice, it could happen that, despite being the owner of the physical copies of sketches and preparatory works of certain garments or motifs, the company does not hold the IP rights over such creations of the past.

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The fight against counterfeiting continues: the first Counterfeit and Piracy Watch List is now out.

After the public consultation launched last January, on 7 December 2018, the European Commission (EC) published the first Counterfeit and Piracy Watch List, which provides examples of reported marketplaces or service providers located outside the EU and engaged in counterfeiting and piracy.

Such Watch List was highly expected by right holders and represents the last measure adopted by the EC against infringers, after the Overview of the functioning of the Memorandum of Understanding on the sale of counterfeit goods via the internet (MoU) in 2016 and the Guidelines for online platforms to tackle illegal content in 2017.

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