Around the IP Blogs!

This Kitten is delighted to bring you the highlights from some recently published IP blogs!

The fresh smell of some IP blogs!

Tibbie McIntyre reports on The 1709 Blog on a number of items, including the declaration of fair use filed by the Andy Warhol estate against Lynn Goldsmith regarding Warhol’s Prince Series; the settlement reached by singer Ed Sheeran and songwriters Martin Harrington and Thomas Leonard in connection with the song ‘Photograph’; the case Mavrix Photographs v LiveJournal, No. 14-56596, which considered whether the safe harbor defense applies to moderators who review infringing content before it is published online; and the cases Malibu Media, LLC v Doe, No. 3:17-cv-195(JAM), and Foshan Limited v Pornhub.com, No. 2:17-mc-00037 UA, in both of which subpoenas were granted for obtaining information of infringing uploaders who used BitTorrent and Pornhub, respectively.

Staying with copyright, but from the perspective of Competition law, Marco Lo Bue analyzes on TrustinIP the Advocate General Opinion in the case Biedrība ‘Autortiesību un komunicēšanās konsultāciju aģentūra – Latvijas Autoru apvienība’ v Konkurences padome, EU:C:2017:286, which involves the interpretation of article 102 TFEU in relation to a fine imposed by the Competition Authority to the Latvian collecting society for charging excessive rates.

Moving to trademarks, Christian Tenkhoff discusses on MARQUES Class 46 the case adidas AG v Shoe Branding Europe BVBA, R1515/2016-2, in which the Second Board of Appeal of the EUIPO upheld the Cancellation Division decision, which declared invalid the “three parallel stripes” trademark on the ground of lack of distinctiveness.

Staying with trademarks, Lina Marcela Tello Perlaza recaps on IP tango the refusal of registration of the mark AESCO Colombia in class 45 for covering, inter alia, legal services, based on the article 136 (g) of the Decision No. 486 Establishing the Common Industrial Property Regime. Registration was refused because the mark reproduces the pre-Columbian figure of the “Jaguar man”, which belongs to the community Pijao and reflects “the belief that all the species of the Earth are human beings with different cosmologies”.

Moving to the commercial side of IP, IPKat Neil Wilkof ruminates on IP Finance whether the concept of the “long tail”, popularized by Chris Anderson, has been successfully applied to the indie film industry.

Finally, Carina Gommers blogs on JIPLP how the ratification by several European countries of the MEDICRIME Convention could help in the fight against the counterfeiting of pharmaceutical products in the context of the findings of the Report of the European Observatory on Infringements of Intellectual Property Rights.