Trade mark

Sir Walter …

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Raleigh or Scott or … buffalo grass.

Yates J has upheld the Registrar’s refusal to register SIR WALTER for buffalo grass in class 31 on the grounds it lacked any capacity to distinguish and was not in fact distinctive.[1]

Buchanan Turf has a PBR for a variety of soft leaf buffalo grass called Sir Walter – PBR Certificate No. 1082. The variety is actually registered as “Sir Walter”. The PBR is due to expire on 27 March 2018. After that date, of course, anyone will be free to propagate and sell the Sir Walter variety. I wonder what they will call it?

For reasons best known to themselves, Buchanan Turf sought to amend the class 31 specification during the examination process to read:

Buffalo grass of the ‘Sir Walter’ variety (as lodged with the Registrar of Plant Breeder’s Rights (ref: certificate no. 1028), being part of the genus Stenotaphrum and a member of the species Secundatum.

Are you still wondering what the putative propagaters after March 2018 will be wanting to call their variety of lawn seed?

Applying the usual tests, Yates J found that Sir Walter had no inherent capacity to distinguish:

Here, the appellant developed a new thing—a new variety of buffalo grass having particular characteristics—which it called Sir Walter. Sir Walter is the given and proper name for the new variety. It has no other name. In this way, the name Sir Walter must be taken to be part of the common stock of language that denotes this particular variety of grass.

His Honour distinguished the Zima case on the basis that “Zima” was not the name of a variety of tomato.

Buchanan Turf argued its name had acquired distinctiveness – there had been over $16 million in sales since 1996 and some 68 licensed growers. There was also evidence of extensive television, radio and other media advertising; often featuring the terms Sir Walter in combination with a knight device,[2] almost invariably presenting the expression in quotes. One example of use without the device by way of illustration:

“Sir Walter” Premium lawn turf

Sir Walter Premium Lawn Turf is a superior quality soft buffalo grass giving unmatched performance for Australian conditions. Here you can find out all there is to know about this ideal, low maintenance lawn called ‘Sir Walter’. ….

His Honour considered that these types of use, even in specially marked out form, just identified the type of grass that was being used. In doing so, Yates J pointed out that just because the public had come to associate a term with a particular trader did not mean in functioned as a trade mark, relying on Jacob LJ’s dictum in the British Sugar case[3] and BP v Woolworths.

Where the name was used with the knight device, it was not sufficient to show that the combined device as a whole was distinctive, or had acquired distinctiveness. It was necessary to show that SIR WALTER alone had done so as the knight device was not part of the trade mark applied for. As with the standalone uses, in context the name just referred to the type of grass, not its trade source.

Yates J noted that there was no direct evidence from customers about what the name signified to them. This seems to be a recurrent theme in judicial comment. I wonder, however, what that evidence would need to disclose before the conclusion that any such customers just associated the name with Buchanan Turf could be overcome especially in circumstances where (a) it was the name of the variety and (b), until March 2018, there can be only one trade source?[4]

The PBR Act provides:[5]

A name … in respect of a plant variety must not:

…

(e) be or include a trade mark that is registered, or whose registration is being sought, under the Trade Marks Act 1995 , in respect of live plants, plant cells and plant tissues.

Yates J thought this provision evidenced a policy that rights to use a plant variety name after the PBR had expired should not be impeded by a trade mark registration which, of course, May last a lot longer than a PBR. However, there was no express prohibition in the Trade Marks Act, as there is with the names of patented things, against registering the name of a PBR as a trade mark.

Buchanan Turf Supplies Pty Ltd v Registrar of Trade Marks [2015] FCA 756

  1. Trade Marks Act 1995 s 41(6) (i.e., the old form).  ?
  2. One representation of the combination mark is shown in the Schedule. The knight device is itself a registered trade mark, No 882781.  ?
  3. TREAT: the relevant extract is set out at paragraph 34.  ?
  4. For one case where consumer type evidence was successfully led, see Philmac v Registrar of Trade Marks.  ?
  5. Plant Breeders Act 1994 s 27(5)  ?

Sir Walter … Read More »

Australian Intellectual Property Report 2015

Leave a Comment / Designs, Patents, PBR, Trade marks / / / , , , , , , ,

IP Australia has released its Australian Intellectual Property Report 2015.

In addition to reporting on a range of statistics and some commentary, the report includes a number of “interactive” graphs that you may explore. Much, if not all, of the data is available through the Government Open Data initiative.

The headline point is that applications for trade marks and plant breeder’s rights increased over 2013, while applications for patents and registered designs decreased. The report attributes the decline in patent applications to the increased threshold arising from the commencement of most of the substantive reforms in the Raising the Bar and the rush to file before their commencement.

Australians are the largest source of filings for trade mark, registered designs and pbr. US-based applicants the largest source of patent applications; Australian residents being the second largest.

There were 25,947 applications for standard patents in 2014, a decrease of 13% on 2013. 19,034 standard patents were granted; an increase of 13% over 2013. Over 94% were granted to non-residents. The average number of months from filing to request for examination fell from 16.3 to 13.6 months; the average time from request to first report is just over 9 month and, on average, the time from first examination report to acceptance was a further 14 months. Australians filed 9,012 patent applications abroad in 2013 (41% in the USA), up 3% on 2012.

There were 1523 applications for innovation patents, down from 1676 in 2013. Australians accounted for 66% of the filings.

There were 64,381 trade mark applications filed in Australia in 2014, up 2% from 2013; correspondingly, Australians filed 16,267 applications overseas (in 2013). The top 3 filing destinations were the USA, China and NZ – accounting for 50%. The USA supplanted China as the “top destination”. Apparently, this is in line with a global trend.

6550 designs were registered in 2014, and 1452 were certified – almost double the number certified in 2013. IP Australia speculates that there are few applications to register designs because:

According to Lim et al (2014) the role of IP rights in the market for designs is limited.9 Buyers and sellers in the market view designs as a service that is co-created. As IP rights protect the artefact, not the service, IP rights are perceived as a secondary issue in the marketplace. This view of design rights provides insights into the low volume of design registrations relative to patents and trade marks.

The number of applications for plant breeder’s rights skyrocketed from 330 in 2013 to 341!

The report notes that IP Australia is aiming in 2015 to complete research projects into innovation trends in the mining industry, who and in which areas in the textile, clothing and footwear industry is filing patents and the role of geographical indicators.

Australian Intellectual Property Report 2015 Read More »

Blocking injunctions – the Bill

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The Commonwealth Government has introduced into Parliament the Copyright Amendment (Online Infringement) Bill 2015. This bill will implement the second (or third) of the Government’s online infringement proposals.

The Bill would insert a new s 115A into the Act. Under s 115A, a copyright owner would have a right to apply to the Federal Court for an injunction against a carriage service provider[1] requiring the carriage service provider to take reasonable steps to block access to on online location outside Australia the primary purpose of which is to infringe copyright (whether in Australia or not).

The EM is at pains to stress that the website must be outside Australia – otherwise the copyright owner could sue directly – and its primary purpose must be copyright infringement. Thus, the EM says services like Youtube, iTunes and so on would not be exposed to the risk of injunction.

The bill does not prescribe what steps would be reasonable (to attempt) to block access, but presumably guidance may be sought from English decisions on this issue.

In deciding whether or not to grant the injunction, the Court will be directed to take into account a range of factors including, in particular, the flagrancy of the infringement and the proportionality of blocking access to the extent of the infringement.

Provision is also made for the person operating the website to be, or become, a party to the proceeding and to apply after an injunction has been granted for it to be rescinded or varied.

The carriage service provider will be liable for costs only if it enters an appearance and takes part in the proceedings. The bill does not make provision for whom should bear the costs of implementing and maintaining the injunction.

The injunctions provided by the English courts include a mechanism for copyright holders to “update” the webiste addresses so that, if the website operator changes the URL, it is an administrative exercise to notify the ISP. The Bill does not appear specifically to contemplate this, and it is unclear whether the Federal Court would, or should, adopt such a mechanism.

In addition to discussion of blocking methods, the Cartier[2] ruling in England includes an interesting discussion of the costs of such applications and also the costs incurred by the ISPs in implementing the injunctions. Apparently, after the initial cases, such an application typically cost the copyright owners around £14,000 with a further fee of around £3,600 per year per website for monitoring. The costs to ISPs reported by the judge ranged from a “low four figure sum per month” to a “low six figure sum a year”.

The Cartier case concerned websites infringing trade marks, not copyright. One might wonder whether the Australian law should also extend to trade marks?

The Senate has referred the Bill to its Legal and Constitutional Affairs committee for review. There is plainly not much to discuss about the bill, as the committee is due to report back by 13 May 2015 and you must make your submissions, if any, by 16 April 2015.

Copyright Amendment (Online Infringement) Bill 2015 (pdf)
Explanatory Memorandum (pdf)

  1. For you and me, that’s Telstra, Optus, iiNet/TPG, Foxtel etc., but real lawyers should go via s10 to here (take a tent and all necessary provisions and we’ll see you in several years).  ?
  2. Also known as Richemont after the third claimant.  ?

Blocking injunctions – the Bill Read More »

Major sporting events

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Did you know there was a Major Sporting Events (Indicia and Images) Protection Bill 2014? (From which you may deduce that I didn’t). It was introduced into Parliament on 26 March 2014.

It is designed to provide protections for certain indicia associated with the upcoming:

  • Asian Football Championships to be held in Australia in 2015;
  • the ICC World Cup to be held in Australia and New Zealand in 2015; and
  • the 2018 Commonwealth Games on the Gold Coast,

against ‘ambush marketing’. As the EM states:

The Event owners have sought a commitment from the government to protect against the unauthorised commercial use of certain indicia and images associated with the respective events to help them secure and maintain event sponsorship.

If sponsors do not have certainty that they are the only businesses that can directly benefit from association with the Events, they may withdraw their sponsorship or decide not to support the Events. A decrease in sponsorship revenue could increase the need for financial assistance from the Australian Government and/or state and territory governments to stage the events.

The Bill has been modelled on the (now repealed) legislation for the protection of the Sydney Olympic games in 2000 (here and here) and the Melbourne Commonwealth Games in 2006.

As the Simplified Outline explains in clause 15:

Generally speaking, a person cannot use a major sporting event’s 5 protected indicia or images for commercial purposes during the 6 event’s protection period, unless the person is an official user for 7 the event (that is, either an event body or an authorised person for 8 the event).

The remedies provided include injunctions, damages, corrective advertising and a regime for Customs seizure.

Clause 14 explains that:

Doing any of the following is not alone sufficient to suggest the existence of a sponsorship arrangement, or the provision of other support, for the purposes of paragraph 12(1)(c):

(a) using protected indicia or images for the primary purpose of criticism or review;

(b) using protected indicia or images for the primary purpose of providing information, including through reporting news and 14 presenting current affairs.

Major Sporting Events (Indicia and Images) Protection Bill 2014

Explanatory Memorandum

Major sporting events Read More »

Securities over IP

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IP Australia has published a reminder:

The transitional period to register any securities (charges, mortgages etc.) you may have taken out over IP ( registered trade marks, patents, designs etc.) on the Personal Property Securities Register expires on 31 January 2014.

The Personal Properties Security Register is a national register of claims to security interests over personal property (which includes our imaginary subject matters) in essence to provide a one stop shop for notice about such claims.

If you (or your client) has taken out a security over someone else’ intellectual property or where the other person’s intellectual property is being used as collateral for repayment, the security should be registered on the Personal Property Securities Register. In very broad terms: if the security isn’t registered in the Personal Property Securities Register, its claim to priority over any later security or even enforceability could be lost.

IP Australia’s warning points out that it is not enough to have registered the security interest in a register of IP such as the Trade Marks Register, the Patents Register, the Register of Designs or the Register of PBR. These registrations will not be transferred automatically to the Personal Property Securities Register. Morever, registration of the security interest on one or more of those IP Registers will not take priority over a later registration on the Personal Property Securities Register.

So, if you or your client have taken out such a security and haven’t registered it in the Personal Property Securities Register yet, ‘hurry, hurry, hurry; quick, quick, quick’ (with apologies to Alexis Jordan).

Although IP Australia’s warning relates specifically to the registered IP it administers, the legislation also applies to unregistered IP such as copyright.

IP Australia’s media release.

IP Australia’s general overview of PPS

PPS R.

Securities over IP Read More »

Superman KOs “superman workout”

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DC Comics, the owner of rights to the, er, man of steel character, has successfully blocked an attempt the register “superman workout” for “conducting exercise classes; fitness and exercise clinics, clubs and salons; health club services (exercise)” in class 41. It did have to appeal from the Registrar of Trade Marks to the Federal Court and it did not win for the reasons you might think.

Like the Registrar, Bennett J rejected DC Comics’ opposition based on s 60. Her Honour accepted that the superhero was indeed well-known, but noted that the term “superman” was also an ordinary English word defined as such in both the Macquarie and Oxford Dictionaries:

[49] …. the use of the word “superman” in the Trade Mark is, or has become, descriptive. Use of a word originally associated with a particular trade source, may over time become descriptive of a class of goods or characterisations.

[50] When the Trade Mark is used without reference to any of the well known indicia associated with the DC Comics superhero and as contained in the registered Trade Mark or other trade marks registered by DC Comics, there is no likelihood that use of the Trade Mark would be likely to deceive or cause confusion by reference to the Superman word mark, or the subject matter of DC Comics’ registered trade marks. The public would not be caused to wonder whether “superman workout” came from the same source as the Superman character or DC Comics.

Accordingly, there was no real, tangile danger of people confusing use in relation to fitness workouts with the superhero.

When Cheqout began using “superman workout”, however, it also used it with this logo:

cheqout logo
cheqout logo

Bennett J was willing to infer that this logo was being used to strengthen the allusion to the Man of Steel and so appropriate the benefit of DC Comics’ reputation for Cheqout’s fitness services. That was not in accordance with acceptable commercial standards and so the application was made in bad faith contrary to s 62A.

In reaching that conclusion, Bennett J adopted the approach previously taken by Dodds-Streeton J in the Tennis Warehouse case. Bennett J emphasised that Dodds-Streeton J rejected a submission that exploitative conduct alone could never constitute ‘bad faith’. Rather, it was the particular circumstances of that case, especially the US company’s failure to follow up its demands for 2 years.

DC Comics v Cheqout Pty Ltd [2013] FCA 478

Superman KOs “superman workout” Read More »

Raising the Bar update

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Following the conclusion of consultations about the draft Intellectual Property Legislation Amendment Regulations (the regulations to implement the “Raising the Bar” amendments), IP Australia has published a document outlining the outcomes of the consultation process.

The document outlines what IP Australia is proposing to do/implement in relation to:

 

Schedule 1

 

  • preliminary search and opinion
  • search fee
  • priority date
  • other things

 

Schedule 3

 

  • filing of evidence in oppositions
  • extensions of time to file evidence
  • confidentiality
  • fees for notice of intention to defenddefence (TM oppositions) (lid dip: Andrew Sykes)
  • cooling off period for patent oppositions (not in the public interest)
  • dismissing trade mark oppositions for inadequately particularised grounds
  • document service
  • no changes to basis for adding grounds / particulars to a notice of opposition
  • no change to costs provisions

 

Schedule 4

 

  • suspension regime for patent / trade mark attorneys will be retained

 

Schedule 5

 

  • customs seizure: regulations will be amended to require importers to provide full name, telephone number and address for service in ‘claim for release’ forms
  • email address will not be made mandatory

 

Schedule 6

 

  • applicants for patents will have 2 months to respond to a direction to request examination after examination has been deferred
  • acceptance period after 1st report on patent application has been issued will be reduced to 12 months
  • “IP Australia will not require a statement of entitlement at filing for standard patents (or at national phase entry for PCT applications). Instead, the statement will be required when the applicant requests examination, as part of the approved form.” Applicants for an innovation patent will still need to provide the statement when filing the application
  • The Commissioner / Registrar will retain discretion to decide whether hearings should be decided on the papers without oral presentation
  • Apparently, there are technical corrections that will be implemented to

Links to:

 

Public Consultation Update papers

IP Australia’s Press Release

 

 

IP Australia’s helicopter summary of Raising the Bar, more links and IP Australia’s summaries for patents, copyright, trade marks and designs.

Patentology looks at the good news for SMEs and some of the things rejected, here.

Raising the Bar update Read More »

Raising the bar reg.s 2.2

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Dr Summerfield has updated his marked up version of the reg.s to reflect the second tranche of the exposure draft regulations, here.

He also draws attention to the shortening time frames the exposure draft regulations will introduce.

You still need to get your comments in by 21 November 2012.

Raising the bar reg.s 2.2 Read More »

2nd tranche of Raising the Bar draft regulations

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IP Australia today released the second tranche of exposure draft regulations implementing the Intellectual Property Laws Amendment (Raising the Bar) Act 2012.

This tranche deals with schedule 3 (reducing delays in resolving patent and trade mark applications) and schedule 6 (simplifying the IP system).

Comments still need to be submitted by 21 November 2012.

Go here, and scroll down (past the first tranche if you already have them).

Dr Summerfield prepared a marked up version of the regs as the first tranche would amend them and discussed the new search fee implications.

2nd tranche of Raising the Bar draft regulations Read More »

similar to or capable of being confused with

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Idameneo (No. 789) won its appeal from Symbion. The competing trade marks can be viewed here.

The Full Court agreed with the trial judge that the contractual restraint against using:

any Mark similar to or capable of being confused with any of the Trade Marks or which contain the words SYMBION

imposed a different standard to the trade mark infringement test of substantial identity or deceptive similarity. However, the Full Court did not treat it as a single over-arching test.

For the purposes of the outcome, however, the crucial point was that both companies were using their respective marks in different specialist markets. Hence it was important to consider how persons in the relevant specialist market would react to Idameneo’s sign:

  1. Here, although the Symbion registration does extend to diagnostic and imaging services, there was no evidence that the goods or services of Symbion and Idameneo would find markets in substantially common areas or among the same classes of people. To the contrary, the evidence established that each of the parties currently operated in distinct and different specialised markets. And, as we have found above, the Symbion marks, on the one hand, and the Idameneo mark, on the other, are not the same and do not closely resemble one another. Thus, although the Symbion marks had been used in the same sector as the Idameneo mark prior to the demerger in 2008 and for a time afterwards, they were always distinct and did not so closely resemble one another that there was a real risk of anyone being caused to wonder whether the respective marks identified or were associated with services that come from the same source.
  2. The parties must have intended in cl 5.5(b) that Idameneo not “use… any Mark … capable of being confused with any of” the Symbion registration or Symbion device mark as a restraint that protected Symbion’s legitimate commercial interests in those two marks themselves and the reputation and goodwill associated with them. While the Symbion device mark had been used to brand the Healthcare imaging business before the merger in 2008, by April 2010 only the Idameneo mark was used by Idameneo for all its imaging businesses, including Healthcare. Having regard to the lack of resemblance between the marks and the lack of any evidence of any possibility of confusion in the specialised markets, Symbion’s claim based on a breach of cl 5.5(b) must fail.

(emphasis supplied)

As the Court accepted that the contractual formulation must have a broader scope than the statutory test (albeit to no practical effect in this case), which formulation will you use when you are drafting a contractual restraint delimiting competing users’ respective fields of use?

Idameneo (No 789) Ltd v Symbion Pharmacy Services Pty Ltd [2011] FCAFC 164 (Rares, Gilmour and Dodds-Streeton)

similar to or capable of being confused with Read More »

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