General Election 2019 - possible copyright infring.The UK Government sheds light on the status of cry.IPKat Book of the Year Awards 2019: Nominate your.CJEU rules on genuine use of collective trade marks.Book Review:The Parody Exception in Copyright Law.Hague Court of Appeal stays enforcement of patent.Maradona successfully sues Dolce&Gabbana over unau.BREAKING: CJEU rules that the provision of ebooks.BREAKING: Court of Appeal frames Article 3(a) tes.Never Too Late: If You Missed the IPKat.Is "fake" a four-letter word ask the rhinoceros.EU General Court considers sign referring to canna.EPO refuses "AI inventor" applications in short or.Paris Court of Appeal confirms that Koons’s 'Naked.Never Too Late: if you missed The IPKat last week.The Year of the Pepper: 2019 Enlarged Board of App.A Question of Priorities: 2019 Boards of Appeal Ye.Everybody was kung fu fighting: trade.English High Court dismisses Babybel appeal on the.It's nearly New Year's Eve: Why "Tipsy" is such an.Until When Can Patent Claims Be Limited in Civil P.Current practice is to, however, allow a limited number of comments that contravene this policy, provided that the comment has a high degree of relevance and the comment chain does not become too difficult to follow. It is also the IPKat policy that comments should not be made completely anonymously, and users should use a consistent name or pseudonym (which should not itself be defamatory or obscene, or that of another real person), either in the "identity" field, or at the beginning of the comment. Comments will not be allowed if the contravene the IPKat policy that readers' comments should not be obscene or defamatory they should not consist of ad hominem attacks on members of the blog team or other comment-posters and they should make a constructive contribution to the discussion of the post on which they purport to comment. This episode shows, once again, the importance of building an effective IP strategy that takes into consideration all the possible scenarios of infringement, accompanied with constant monitoring also to avoid disputes like the present one.Īll comments must be moderated by a member of the IPKat team before they appear on the blog.
It appears that the weak trade mark protection that the Bruce Lee Enterprises and Shannon Lee established for the Bruce Lee image has put them in hot water. For this reason, even if the defendant’s sign is a registered trade mark and it has been used for a long time already, it may be considered as an act of unfair competition that has been gone unnoticed all these years. Even if, in the case at hand, the defendant did not use Bruce Lee’s name, it may be argued that the clear depiction of Lee’s silhouette in the famous kungfu position (picture above), clearly evokes his world and that the defendant exploited his likeness. The recently emended Law Against Unfair Competition of the People’s Republic of China (see here ) forbids the use of a person’s name “with certain influence” to mislead consumers into believing there is a connection with such famous person.
However, it seems that during the registration process for the mark at issue, the Lee estate did not oppose the registration on the basis of Article 101 GRCL, which would have, most likely, hurdled the registration at its early stage.įurthermore, the Bruce Lee Enterprises own various trade marks featuring Bruce Lee’s name and different stylisations of his facial features.
Despite the fact that Article 101 of the General Rules of the Civil Law of the People's Republic of China (GRCL) grants natural persons the right, amongst others, to their name, portrait and reputation (see here ), Real Kungfu was able, in 2007, to register Bruce Lee features as an international trade mark designating China, the European Union and Turkey (see registration here ) and use it for many years.Īccording to Article 32 of the Trademark Law of the People's Republic of China, a sign cannot be registered as a trademark if it prejudices the existing prior rights of others (see here ).