All Articles in Brands

In the footsteps of Sir Stelios’s efforts to put brand use of ‘Easy’ off limits for all other businesses, Apple Computer is lashing out from its Cupertino California HQ at…

As Big Brother fever once again sweeps the nation, Nestlé transformed itself into Willy Wonka in order to secure its slice of the marketing pie. With 5 complaints received by…

As Anheuser-Busch makes an application to register the word ‘Bud’ as a community trade mark, once again, the two breweries go head to head in a battle to protect their…

Not using a registered trade mark for 5 years exposes it to revocation. Proving use was not just a matter of asserting it, the court said in this milk drink…

Hackney Council couldn’t quite believe it when it saw its 40 years old logo on a range of Nike sportswear. Nike said it was celebrating Hackney Marshes as all that…

The rule is that branding doing no more than making a generic promotional claim cannot become a registered trade mark. So what about ‘You wont believe your eyes’? Distinctive enough…

After months of bickering and attempted negotiation, France Telecom’s Orange has finally lost patience and issued proceedings against easyGroup and its use of orange for the competing easyMobile brand. But…

US lawyers for Vogue publisher Conde Nast have written in high dudgeon to the Mail on Sunday’s ‘You’ magazine complaining of ‘virtually indistinguishable’ typefaces and ‘confusion on the news stand’.…

The naughty nineties saw multiple disputes over ‘lookalike’ packaging, with supermarket ‘own labels’ lining up against big brand owners. In the UK at least, the law was found wanting, but…

No less than six recent Euro/US cases focused on when a registered trade mark is infringed by a ‘similar’ brand. In the ring were T-Online/E! Online, Starbucks/Charbucks, Cerfix/Perfix, BEAM/BEMA, VOV…

Three trade mark verdicts in recent months concentrate the mind on the need to use brands on all of the products for which they are registered or risk losing the…

Two companies fought a pitched battle over the brand METRIX ELECTRONICS. One was trying to get it registered as a trade mark. The other had used the unregistered mark METRIX…