Waterfront partner, Matthew Harris, acting as advocate has secured a win in a contested hearing before the United Kingdom Intellectual Property Office in a recent trade mark invalidity case. US company Andover Healthcare Inc had sought to invalidate the KO-FLEX trade mark of Urgo Limited for bandages by claiming prior rights in the term COFLEX under the law of passing off. The case was unusual in that the hearing officer had to consider the scope of Andover’s rights in the late 1990s and this required a consideration of the impact of the Medical Devices Regulations 1994 on market practice.
The decision was issued on 4 February 2015, but only now become publically available on the UK IPO website
The current legal framework in the UK does not allow copying of copyright-protected material for training generative AI models, except where it is carried out with permission of the copyright owner or done in a research or study context and for purely non-commercial purposes.
This matter deals with the Claimant’s (‘TVIS’) allegation of infringement and misrepresentation in relation to its “VETSURE” trade mark by the Defendant (‘Howserv’s’) “PETSURE” trade mark, used for pet insurance. In the first instance decision, the claim was dismissed due to the marks being highly descriptive and “not…