JUDGMENT OF THE COURT OF FIRST INSTANCE (Eighth Chamber) of 13 May 2009 T136/08 - Aurelia: Community trade mark – Community word mark AURELIA – Failure to pay renewal fee – Removal of trade mark from register on expiry of registration – Application for restitutio in integrum. ECJ (Grand Chamber) of 20 January 2009 C240/07 - Sony vs Falcon: Article 10(2) of Directive 2006/116 is to be interpreted as meaning that the terms of protection provided for by that directive apply in a situation where the work or subjectmatter at issue was, on 1 July 1995, protected as such in at least one Member State under that Member State’s national legislation on copyright and related rights and where the holder of such rights in respect of that work or subjectmatter, who is a national of a nonMember State, benefited, at that date, from the protection provided for by those national provisions. According to the Supreme Court ruling of 11th March 2004 ("Rolex") privileged position as to liability under § 11 Sentence 1 of the Teleservices Act does not affect the cease-and-desist claim. The privileged positions as to liability frees the service provider from any responsibility for external information hosted for a user. The European Court of Justice (EuGH-online pharmacy) held in its ruling of 10th December 2003 that the German prohibition of online pharmacies does not comply with European law as far as prescription-free medicines are concerned. Deep-linking is permitted according to the ruling of the German Supreme Court (Paperboy) (case no. I ZR 259/00 of 17th July 2003). Whoever puts publicly accessible articles online has to accept that they may be linked directly (so-called „deep-linking“ or „web-clipping“) while bypassing the entry pages of content providers. The German Supreme Court (MAXEM.DE, Docket Nr. I ZR 296/00) in contrast to lower courts held in its ruling of 26th June 2003 that the owner of name prevails in the dispute over the internet address MAXEM.DE. The ruling argued mostly on the basis of law relating to names without regarding the peculiarities of the internet. The dispute concerning the term “BONUS” started in 1988 (BGH, ruling of 28th February 2002 ヨ case number I ZB 10/99 Federal Patent Tribunal - BONUS II). Now the applicant is trying to register it as a trademark; even though the German Supreme Court had already “obliged” the Federal Patent Tribunal to register the trademark before, it refused to do so again (and again to no avail). On 22nd November, 2001, the German Supreme Court (case number I ZR 138/99, SHELL.DE) sided with the lower courts which carved out an exception to the „first come first serve“ rule and affirmed the domain name to subsidiary company of the worldwide mineral oil tycoon. Labour Court in Hanover ruled that terminating an employment agreement without notice with an employee who was surfing in the internet for private purposes (pornography) was justified. Linking liability - the Regional Appeal Court in Brunswick (ftp-explorer) ruled that § 5 of the Teleservices Act is generally applicable to linking. On 12th December 2000, the first division of the Supreme Constitutional Court, (case number 1 BvR 1762/95 and 1 BvR 1787/95, Benetton-advertisement) ruled that the press freedom of a magazine publisher can be infringed, when it is banned to publish certain advertisements, for which the advertising party enjoys protection of freedom of thought. On the 17th May 2001, the German Supreme Court BGH (mitwohnzentrale.de) upheld the ruling of the Regional Appeal Court in Hamburg with the effect that generic terms are now “again” allowed as domain names. The Federal Supreme Court, however, has already sketched an outline of what the criteria of behaviour contrary to fair competition will be. In its ruling of 4th May 2000, The Regional Court of Appeal (OLG) in Hamburg (Case No. 3 U 197/99) – “Kulturwerbung” held that that an internet domain is principally suitable for representing a company or person that has such a name, even if it contains generic terms. The ruling of the German Supreme Court - LOGO: it is not possible to exclude a denomination from protection only because it can possibly be ascribed to common language usage. The German Supreme Courts ruling on digital circuits: delineation between not patentable „software as such“ and patentable „software patents“. |