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No caption necessary This is the third and final post in the  series  on the Second Brand Protection Conference in Frankfurt.  This post is all about Mette Andersen's insights into the LEGO Group. For me, this was one of the most fascinating and informative talks. Whilst it was focused on the LEGO brand protection experience, the lessons that Mette shared provide an excellent framework for all brands on their IP journey. I am sure IPKat readers will find the story similarly inspiring.  Background  The business was aware of the importance of IP rights from the moment they made their transition from wooden toys to plastic bricks with the well known circular connecting tubes that enable everything from the Death Star to Hogwarts to be created with relative ease.  Because the LEGO Group is such an established business, many of these rights have now expired. For example their patent over the tubes and the way in which they interact expired in 1978...

Access blocked ... or not? Fifteen months after the law introducing the Greek “Commission for the notification of online copyright and related rights infringement” was passed and eight months after the start of its operations , the Commission has finally issued its first blocking orders. Katfriend Yannos Paramythiotis (Paramythiotis & Partners Law Firm) explains what happened. Here’s what Yannos writes: The blocking order application was filed by EPOE , an organization for the collective protection of audiovisual works representing Greek film production and distribution companies Odeon, Seven, Feelgood Entairtainment, Tanweer Alliances and the Greek Film Centre. These entities are the licensees of rights in films produced Warner Bros, 20 th Century Fox, Paramount, Walt Disney Pictures, Universal and Sony Pictures for the Greek territory. EPOE requested the blocking of several torrent, streaming and subtitle websites providing access to infringing content. Following this applic...

This is the second in a series of blogs following the Second Brand Protection Conference in Frankfurt. The first is available here . Th e first blog looked at some of the issues faced by major brands. This blog looks at some of the solutions.  The law enforcement perspective David Hunt from Camden Trading Standards gave a fascinating overview of the long Camden market's l ong history of counterfeit goods - where the fakes have become a tourist attraction in their own right. David and his team has successfully implemented a new way of tackling counterfeit goods in co-operation with the Anti-Counterfeiting Group , police and major payment providers. New approaches to landlords who are being made to take greater responsibility for their markets (thanks to money laundering legislation) together with the Real Deal initiative have been very helpful as well. Following successful prosecutions, Camden High Street is slowly changing and major brands are moving in to take over the previous...

The first Counterfeit and Piracy Watch List has been published by the European Commission (EC) today. It identifies marketplaces, registrars and hosting providers located outside the EU which are engaged in facilitating substantial counterfeiting and piracy.  Background   On 22 January 2018, the EC launched the public consultation with the aim to establish its first Counterfeit and Piracy Watch List containing marketplaces located outside the EU.  The Watch List is part of one of the measures adopted by the EU (reported by this Kat here ) with the aim of stepping up the fight against counterfeiting and piracy, by raising “consumer awareness concerning the environmental, product safety and other risks of purchasing” on the marketplaces identified on the Watch-List, and encouraging “their operators and owners to crack down on intellectual property abuse”.  The findings   The Watch List is divided into four chapters covering online marketplaces offering content p...

Brand protection is much harder in the digital age - small packages are a big part of the problem I have recently returned from the Second Brand Protection Congress in Frankfurt. It was a very interesting event with a wide range of speakers and topics all linked to brand protection. The talks ranged from the various online anti-counterfeiting tools and latest technological developments and intermediary liability through to the various methods that brands have adopted to protect their rights. There were far too many issues discussed for me to go into the detail they deserve but these blogs will cover off the points which I found most interesting (and I hope will be of the most interest to IPKat readers). The industry perspective The dangers associated with counterfeits and illicit trade were highlighted in David Luna ’s opening keynote. Oliver Fein went on to note that there is a tendency for business teams such as brand protection, security, IT security, IP and trade marks to work i...

“ There is nothing new under the sun ”. In copyright law, this declaration from the Book of Ecclesiastes  t ranslates into an awkward tension between the need to limit slavish copying (to prevent free-riding), on the one hand, and the need to allow a degree of derivative creation, on the other (to avoid stifling creativity). But where do we draw the line? This is the fraught question that Omri Rachum-Twaig addresses in his recent book, “Copyright law and derivative works ”. The author revisits the right to make derivative works through the lenses of cognitive psychology and genre theory, both of which study creativity. The author argues that copyright law has much to learn from these two disciplines, both in the way that they understand creativity and how to best encourage it. "Why these two fields", you ask? Perhaps, according to the author, it is because each of them investigates a different aspect of creativity: cognitive psychology focuses on creativity as a process, whi...