Authors: Margret Knitter, LL.M. and Dr. Carolin Louisa Schmidt It’s a familiar image on Instagram: Influencers show themselves perfectly styled in their pictures and let their followers know via so-called tap tags which brands and products they wear and use. By tapping on the photo, the brand is displayed and the user can click on the […]

The International Cannabis Business Conference is Europe’s largest B2B trade event in Berlin, attended by executives, entrepreneurs and policymakers from over 80 nations. It is offering a world-class industry networking and investment/capital opportunity. The Cannabis Industry in Germany: An Intellectual Property Perspective Margret will provide an overview of the Intellectual Property Perspective that cannabis operators […]

I would like to differentiate between the medicinal cannabis side and CBD because that’s a totally different story here in Germany. So, as I said, only medicinal cannabis is legal at the moment. The German federal states don’t have permission to handle it as they want; it’s different from the United States. If you’re caught […]

One of the challenges that we already talked about is that we don’t have case law we can rely on. Advertising is a big issue. But I also think that the licencing process is very restricted in Germany. You need an official licence for everythingdown the line. Regarding the market, medicinal cannabis is worth 190 […]

I’ve been handling cannabis trademarks since 2017, when medicinal cannabis was legalised in Germany. In the beginning those marks were only accepted for Nice Class 5, meaning only cannabis for medicinal use was permitted. But that has changed. Both the European and the German IP office now accept cannabis marks for all sorts of cannabis […]

The General Court has ruled that, in specific circumstances, repeat filings of an earlier trade mark may constitute bad faith First movesHasbro, who at the time already owned three MONOPOLY EUTMs, filed in April 2010 another MONOPOLY EUTMA for goods and services in classes 9, 16, 28 and 41. This trademark covered partially new goods […]

The Court of Justice of the European Union, General Court, recently lowered Chanel’s hopes of having a trademark belonging to Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. invalidated. The court found that the trademarks (see below) are not similar, therefore there is no likelihood of confusion and that trademarks must be assessed as registered, regardless of their rotation […]

The interpretation and standardization of national law on the basis of European law requirements always brings uncertainties – and this is also the case in trademark law. For owners of German trademarks, however, thanks to the decision of the Federal Court of Justice of January 14, 2021 (Case No. I ZR 40/20) and the recently […]

Authors: Martin Matzner, LL.M. (University of Turin)“Incomplete, contradictory, incomprehensible”: In a recent decision, the Federal Patent Court (BPatG) took the German Patent and Trademark Office (DPMA) to task with rather unflattering wordings. The reason for this was the trademark application “Kloster Scheyern”, which the DPMA had initially rejected. This particularly drastic case shows that some […]