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For many years, the China Trademark Office (CTMO) has not accepted “retail” services in Class 35, on the basis that the protection of services implies providing a service for others, rather than the sale of a brand owner’s own goods...
Retail Scanner
NEWS & EVENTS
Issue 11 - November 2021
Welcome to our November issue of the Retail Scanner. The last Brexit date of 30 September 2021 has passed, and we round up of some post-Brexit issues such as exhaustion, AFAs and geographical indications. We take a look at some of the IP protection measures available on e-commerce platforms such as Amazon and Alibaba and review an interesting case from China regarding parallel imports and the difficulties around trade mark registration of ‘retail services’. Finally, as some food for thought we delve into the growing area of lab-grown meat.
It is now eight years since the first lab-grown burger was unveiled by a team of scientists at Maastricht University, but since then the path to market has been slow. Lab-grown meat has attracted significant investment and there appears to be a large, untapped customer base waiting for products to hit the shelves. Could patents be playing a part in the delay, as has been asserted by some parts of the media?
Is an International of Rights Regime coming to the UK? And should it be welcomed by retailers? Since 1973 when the United Kingdom joined the then European Economic Community, until 31st December 2020, the UK had to follow a common regime with regard to the exhaustion of intellectual property rights...
Prior to 1 January 2021, the date on which the UK left the EU, IP rights holders were entitled to record details of their rights with the UK customs authorities and request that any potentially infringing or counterfeit goods entering or leaving the UK or EU market were detained and possibly destroyed...
Trade Mark Director Adjoa Anim highlights the changes to the UK Geographical Indication system. There was a lot of excitement over Gower Salt Marsh Lamb becoming the first UK Geographical Indication (GI) to be award protected designation of origin (PDO) status...
HGF recently presented on this topic at the Luxury Law Summit conference in London, which emphasised the need for brands to take a robust strategy to trade mark protection online. Online protection can feel particularly time consuming; monitoring and enforcing not only your own sales, but sales by third parties and counterfeiters...
