Archives for: ‘Natalie Hickey’
Naming Your Race Horse – Like registering a trade mark? Well, not quite
The annual Spring Racing Carnival and running of the Melbourne Cup, can often lead to more than a sore head and fistfuls of losing betting slips. Inspired by the (admittedly rare) example of a $4000 horse winning a Group 1 race, you too might have recently acquired a small stake in a new race horse. Now, it is time to …
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Tom Cruise proves Risky Business for gossip mags
In late 2012, Life & Style and In Touch magazines published headlines indicating Tom Cruise had abandoned his daughter Suri. Most people might dismiss such articles as minority reports. However, Cruise has filed a Complaint in the District Court of California for defamation and invasion of privacy. He’s asking that the publisher of the magazines show him the money, to …
Read More#IntellectualProperty trending on Twitter: Considering IP in the age of the hashtag
Social media has transformed the ‘hash’ symbol (#) from a mere symbol key into a phenomenon of its own. Yet the addition of the # symbol before a word has not been so simple in the IP world and has many potential implications. For the uninitiated, let’s have a look at the hashtag’s capability. First, the hashtag operates as a …
Read MoreHow to prevent your “ordinary” letter of demand from becoming a Social Media Backlash
Remember the old days of sending a hard copy letter of demand which only a few people (at most) were destined to see? Well, haven’t times changed! Now, it is crucial to consider how best to minimise the prospect that your demand will go ‘viral’. None of us want our correspondence to spark reputational issues for the client beyond the …
Read MoreTrade marks wars: Louboutin’s red soled stilettos are back in the spotlight
The trade mark wars for Louboutin continue, this time in an intriguing dispute in Belgium concerning the use of the iconic shoes on a poster for political advertising. Here’s what happened…. What are the facts behind the case? Recently in Belgium’s Antwerp Court, Louboutin claimed that the Vlaams Belang party infringed its registered trade mark for the colour red (Pantone …
Read More‘Mickey Mouse’ horror film escapes trade mark litigation
Film buffs, roll up! Despite the fact that it probably isn’t showing at your local MegaPlex, Randy Moore’s latest indie horror film ‘Escape from Tomorrow’ has garnered a considerable amount of media attention. Shot on Disney soil without permission, it features iconic (and copyrighted) Disney characters like Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck doing things like attempting to crush a child, …
Read MoreNestlé wins latest battle with Cadbury over the colour purple in the UK
On 4 October 2013, the Court of Appeal of England & Wales upheld an appeal brought by Nestlé in relation to Cadbury’s application to register the colour purple as a trade mark in respect of the packaging of chocolate. Whilst Cadbury’s application was for a specific shade of the colour purple (namely, Cadbury’s famous Pantone 2685C), the Court of Appeal …
Read MoreOAIC releases privacy ‘better practice guide’ for mobile app developers
The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) has been busy of late. As well as releasing the second stage of its Draft Australian Privacy Principles Guidelines for consultation in late September, it recently sent an open letter to Facebook, which we posted about here. However, it’s not very often that we see regulators encouraging the use of graphics, colour and …
Read MoreWhy all the secrecy? Tom Waterhouse defamation settlement reignites court access debate
Imagine you are an “A” type lawyer keen to know what’s going on. Yes, that’s most of us at IP Whiteboard. It means we were frustrated some time ago when told by the NSW District Court that pleadings in the Tom Waterhouse v Fairfax Media defamation case were unavailable for review. Our previous post here explains the policy rationale. Our curiosity …
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