SERBS TO KEEP TO IP TREATY COMMITMENTS; CFI LATEST CASES

Serbs to keep to IP treaty commitments

The IPKat notes with admiration that the Republic of Serbia has been busily putting its international intellectual property commitments in order. Now that Serbia and Montenegro are going their separate ways, the Republic of Serbia has just affirmed its adherence, on its sole behalf, to the following:

* the Convention Establishing the World Intellectual Property Organization;

* the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property;

* the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works;

* the Madrid Agreement for the Repression of False or Deceptive Indications of Source on Goods;

* the Madrid Agreement Concerning the International Registration of Marks;

* the Protocol Relating to the Madrid Agreement Concerning the International Registration of Marks;

* the Hague Agreement Concerning the International Registration of Industrial Designs;

* the Nice Agreement Concerning the International Classification of Goods and Services for the Purposes of the Registration of Marks;

* the Locarno Agreement Establishing an International Classification for Industrial Designs;

* the Lisbon Agreement for the Protection of Appellations of Origin and their International Registration;

* the Nairobi Treaty on the Protection of the Olympic Symbol;

* the Rome Convention for the Protection of Performers, Producers of Phonograms and Broadcasting Organisations;

* the Convention for the Protection of Producers of Phonograms Against Unauthorized Duplication of Their Phonograms;

* the Brussels Convention Relating to the Distribution of Programme-Carrying Signals Transmitted by Satellite;

* the Trademark Law Treaty;

* the WIPO Copyright Treaty;

* the WIPO Performance and Phonograms Treaty;

* the Budapest Treaty on the International Recognition of the Deposit of Microorganisms for the Purposes of Patent Procedure;

* the Patent Cooperation Treaty.

Very nice, says Merpel - but can we expect a similar declaration from Montenegro too?

Famous Serbs here
Be careful what you eat in Serbia


CFI latest cases

Two more offerings from the Court of First Instance of the European Communities found their way on to the Curia website today:

* Case T-172/05 Armacell Enterprise GmbH v Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market, nmc SA. Armacell sought to register the word mark ARMAFOAM for foams in Class 20. nmc opposed, citing a likeliood of confusion with its earlier Community trade mark NOMAFOAM for products in various classes. The Opposition Division rejected the opposition; the Board of Appeal disagreed and allowed it. The CFI has now upheld the Board's decision. The decision discusses whether an applicant, in effectively changing the slant of his arguments as to whether the parties' respective goods are similar, has changed the whole context of the dispute: in this case, Armacell had not done done so and its arguments were admissible. However, Armacell had sought registration for a very broad category of products - "foam goods made from elastomerics, thermoplastics or thermosets as system component or as end use application". If a narrower, more specific list of products had been used, the risk of similarity of goods would have been reduced.

* Case T-302/03 PTV Planung Transport Verkehr AG v OHIM. Alas, this decision is available in every official language except English and Slovak. Even the Maltese have got their own translation ...

The IPKat wonders whether some kind non-Slovak, non-English speaker - perhaps from Malta - might like to tell this blog's ample and growing readership what this decision is about. Merpel says, let's be sensible. Even without knowing any languages we can see that the applicant wanted to register the word sign map&guide as a Community trade mark for goods and services in Classes 9, 41 and 42. The application failed. So did the appeal. The sign looks as though it fell foul of Council Regulation 40/94, Articles 7(1)(b) and (c) - lack of distinctive character and presence of descriptive quality - and was so unregistrable that the Board of Appeal didn't even have to give reasons for its decision ...