Trade Marks
6th October 2011
By Lauren Eade, Lisa Lennon
In 2006, the Trade Marks Act was amended to include a new grounds of opposition to a trade mark application where “the application was made in bad faith” under section 62A. It was thought that the new ground might cater for situations where opponents otherwise had no remedy, including deliberate misappropriation of overseas marks (where the opponent could not establish a reputation in Australia for the purposes of section 60), bad faith use of marks which were not sufficiently similar to marks in which opponents could claim rights, or bad faith use of marks for different goods/services to those of the trade mark owner.
6th October 2011
By Lauren Eade, Lisa Lennon
A recent case has again demonstrated that Australian product design protection law is notoriously complex, and that designers should seek expert advice on design protection before putting a product on the market.
22nd June 2011
By Lisa Lennon
After 6 years of debate, the ICANN board approved the general release of new gTLDs at the ICANN Singapore meeting on 20 June.
6th May 2011
By Lisa Lennon
auDA’s Names Policy Panel has now considered the submissions from the first round of public comments and released its draft recommendations for public consultation. The closing date for submissions is Friday, 10 June 2011.
24th January 2011
By Lisa Lennon
A new national business name registration system is being developed to replace the existing framework which requires business names to be registered separately in every state or territory where a business operates.
8th December 2010
By Lisa Lennon
Every couple of years auDA’s Names Policy Panel (the Panel) conducts a periodic review of the policy framework underlying the allocation and use of domain names in the .au domain space. The Panel has released a Discussion Paper which is open to public comment until 21 January 2011. The Panel has also released a survey to assess user requirements in relation to the .au space. The response deadline on the survey is the same date.
26th November 2010
By Lisa Lennon
In the UK, Nominet has announced that previously restricted ’short’ domain names comprising of single and double characters (0-9 and a-z) will now be available for registration under .co.uk, .org.uk, .net.uk and .me.uk.
1st July 2010
By Anne Clement, Lisa Lennon
The .co domain was originally only for use as the country domain suffix for Colombia. On 26 April 2010 it was opened up for general use, providing an additional option for companies, particularly in view of the fact that the .com domain is now nearing saturation.
5th May 2010
By Lisa Lennon
“Location” is the catchcry of the real estate industry, but a recent case shows that where a particular location is trademarked, others wishing to mention that location in their advertising must tread a fine line between legitimate descriptive use and infringing trade mark use.
4th May 2010
By Lisa Lennon
auDA is seeking public comment about reactivating the second level domains conf.au and info.au and establishing the new domains blog.au and event.au. auDA is also interested in the community’s thoughts about its approach to establishing new domains in the .au space.
22nd March 2010
By Claire Bothwell, Lisa Lennon
If your sweet tooth has you wandering the confectionary aisle in your local supermarket you have probably noticed the raft of imitation chocolate confectionary products, often manufactured under the supermarket’s “home brand” and descriptively labelled. Products such as “milk whip” (think Milky Way) and “cherry bites” (think Cherry Ripe) spring to mind.
22nd March 2010
By Lisa Lennon
The Australian Domain Name Administrator (auDA), which is responsible for regulating the .au domain space, is introducing an official Domain Drop List to alert the public when an expired or deleted domain name will be back on the market.
19th February 2010
By Lisa Lennon
Have you ever picked up a new brand of your favourite product in the supermarket and noticed that its packaging looks suspiciously similar to that of your trusted old brand? A recent case between the producers of NutrientWater and Grassroots Enhanced Water reminds us that it is difficult to stop a little shrewd copying of packaging unless it infringes your registered rights or is likely to confuse customers.
16th February 2010
By Lauren Eade, Lisa Lennon
Click here for our latest update.
8th February 2010
By Lisa Lennon
A new regime is being introduced that will affect the holders of security interests in intellectual property rights.
25th November 2009
By Lauren Eade
Under Australian law, there is no constitutional guarantee of freedom of speech. Australian Courts therefore, have approached the question of parody only incidentally, as part of the application of black letter trade mark law.
29th October 2009
By Lauren Eade, Lisa Lennon
Click here for tips for Brand Management on Social Networking sites.
21st October 2009
By Lisa Lennon
On 2 November 2009, the Australian Domain Name Administrator (auDA), which is repsonsible for regulating the .au domain space, issued an invitation for proposals for new second level domains (or 2LDs) and for the re-activation of the 2LDs conf.au and info.au.
31st July 2009
By Lisa Lennon
When trade mark applications are accepted anywhere in the world they are published in the relevant official journal, most of which are now available online. For a number of years, there have been a range of companies that review legitimate journals and send false invoices to trade mark owners offering to include the recently accepted or registered trade marks in fictional registers or other publications for a fee. In the past, this fee was generally around USD$1000. More recently, the fee is AUD$1450. The invoices often include your full trade mark details and look authentic.
12th June 2009
By Lisa Lennon
Cybersquatters have long caused headaches for trade mark owners by registering Internet domain names containing their trade marks. Now trade mark owners will have to think about protecting their rights in a whole new forum. Facebook, the world`s largest free-access social networking site, has announced that as of tomorrow, 2:01pm (Sydney time) Saturday 13 June 2009, users will be able to obtain personalized usernames for their Facebook page in the form facebook.com/yourname, on a first-come first-served basis.
10th June 2009
By Lauren Eade, Lisa Lennon
Web 2.0 has arrived in all its Facebook, MySpace and Twitter glory, bringing with it a host of opportunities for trade mark abuse, as well as a rash of articles published under awful puns. Twitter is a social networking page, by which users sum up current events in their lives in 140 character updates or `tweets`. While this might at first seem harmless, Twitter has proven a relatively fruitful arena for attack on trade mark rights through the registration of marks as Twitter usernames.
