Posts Tagged ‘misleading or deceptive conduct’

Coffee plungers, tea pots, designs and passing off

Monday, February 8th, 2010

The Federal Court, Middleton J, has rejected Bodum's allegations that

  1. the sale of the Baccarat Venice coffee plunger and Euroline's Classic coffee plunger passed off Bodum's Chambord coffee plunger or was otherwise misleading or deceptive; or
  2. Baccarat's Devon teapot passed off Bodum's Assam Tea Press or was otherwise misleading or deceptive.

Playcorp Group of Companies Pty Ltd v Peter Bodum A/S [2010] FCA 23

The judgment includes depictions of the products and their packaging in the appendices.

Posted in Designs, Trade marks | Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,  | View Comments

Adwords and Keywords

Wednesday, March 25th, 2009
Prof. Gans over at CoreEcon takes issue with Eric Clemons' paper in which Prof. Clemons appears to be arguing that Google's business model - using sponsored links and paid advertising triggered by keywords and the like - is based on misdirection. Now, if Prof. Clemons were right, that could be a reason for contending that the use of trade marks in keywords etc. is (at least) misleading or deceptive conduct. But, as noted, Prof. Gans puts a very big question mark over this. Now, neither of the Professors is dealing with the legal arguments, but I do wonder why people would click on (keep clicking on) Google's sponsored links on the scale which they apparently do if the sponsored links etc. were in fact misdirecting them. Whatever happened to the case which the ACCC brought against Google here?  IPKat overlooks the work in progress in the EU here.

    Posted in Trade marks | Tags: , , , ,  | View Comments