Registering your company name, trading name or domain name doesn’t give the same protection as a Trade Mark registration! Have you noticed many companies with the same or similar names? There are several Station House Hotels in Ireland (Clifden, Letterkenny and Kilmessan in Meath) yet they are all independently trading. By registering your brand name [...]

During the course of a business meeting held in our offices recently, it became apparent that there was some confusion in relation to the registrability of slogans/taglines as trade marks.  Surprise was expressed at the fact that slogans can in fact be protected as trade marks and that many well known slogans are so registered. [...]

In this article we look at a couple of mistakes brand owners sometimes make when adopting a new trade mark. Failure to search All too often stories hit the headlines of companies adopting trade marks, spending thousands of Euros on packaging, publicity materials and marketing, only to have to re-brand when challenged by the owner [...]

Before embarking on a new business venture, there are some pitfalls in IP that are avoidable with the right advice. These include:- •Publicly disclosing an innovation before filing a patent application: Making an innovation “available to the public” by launching the product, engaging in any form of non-confidential disclosure e.g. publishing details of the innovation [...]

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1.  What are the most effective ways for the owner of an Irish Patent derived from a European Patent to enforce its rights in Ireland? Enforcement of a European patent in Ireland is available only by petition to the High Court in civil proceedings. Infringement proceedings are handled by the Chancery Division of the High [...]

It has been widely reported in the Irish media that the Trade Union Unite is launching a test case in an attempt to force the owners of the Trade Mark WATERFORD to have crystal glass sold under that trade mark made exclusively in Waterford. Some crystal items are still made in Waterford but the vast [...]

A large number of patent applications are filed at the European Patent Office (EPO) for computer implemented inventions – a term defined by the EPO to be “an invention that works by using a computer, a computer network or other programmable apparatus and that to qualify [as a computer implemented invention], the invention also needs [...]

Once a Community Trade Mark (CTM) has been registered for an initial period of five years, the registration may be challenged on the ground that the trade mark has not been put to genuine use within the European Community during a continuous period of five years. In the event of such a challenge, the CTM [...]

The IP Translator case concerned the use of class headings when filing applications to register trade marks. In 2003, the Community Trade Marks Office decided that an application to register a trade mark in a particular class could cover all of the goods or services in that class by reciting the Nice Classification heading (Communication [...]