Section: Trademarks Trademarks

The regulation on trademarks, unlike the one on patents, does not control the registration of company marks by employees, as the mark is commercial to be used by a company and if this use does not happen within a certain period of time, whoever has registered it loses all the rights over it. In this […]

The problem in this case refers to the relation between a sign registered as a trademark and others registered at a prior date. The law on copyright ex art n. 100, shields the name of a magazine, therefore nobody can use that same name for other editorial products until that name is used and for […]

The trademark’s owner has the sole right to sell products indicated with a certain mark in the country where he has got the exclusivity. Therefore, if it is known that in Italy the right to a certain mark is of competence to a certain firm, only this latter can sell the specific products. However, there […]

The progress of Internet and creation of new business related to it generates several problems to traders and legal representatives, forced to interpret, and adapting the regulations not born for the technological world of the computers. In fact, before introducing a trademark on Internet, it is prudent to do an international novelty search, ensuring nobody […]

The law automatically protects the name of a newspaper by the copyright, without the need of doing anything in particular, as the art. 100 provides that “the name of a newspaper, magazines or other periodical publications cannot be reproduced for other work of the same kind or character, unless two years have passed from the […]

Registering the geographical origin as a trademark of a company is quite clearly prohibited by the art.13 of the Industrial Property Code. Such a prohibition though, is not entirely absolute, in the sense that it is possible registering a geographical name as a trademark that, in relation to the product or service for which the […]

If the name of a heading is particularly well known, you could not at all proceed with registering it as a mark because of its prestige. However, even if this was not the case, registering the possible trademark would not shield you from any risks, and, above all, you would not automatically gain the right […]

If the trademark is made up by words, at the time when we want to apply for registration, we need to indicate exactly the type of word or words we want protected. This question shows us two aspects of difficulty: the first related to the possibility of protecting in a country a phrase written in […]

Undoubtedly, when starting a business, the names choice strategically represents the most important moment, and it is even more important having the guarantee of being the only one using them. With reference to the first question, during the last years there have been more and more phrases being registered, besides words, which identify a product […]

This choice depends entirely upon the type of protection required and the current status of the trademark. Obviously the cost of the national trademark is less than the international one, and it enables, usually, to get the registration in less time. However, if there is an interest also in other countries, then the international trademark […]

Before registration it is a good rule to do a proper inquiry to ensure that no rights by other parties exist on the chosen name. For this type of search the data banks can be consulted, some are available to the public, some are more complex to be checked and must be paid. The first […]

To evaluate the trademark status, it is first of all essential to know the deposit date from which all rights in favour of the owner will be starting, and also the terms for the subsequent renewals. The maximum duration of a mark is 10 years, after which it can be renewed for a further period […]

The Art. n. 7 of the Industrial Property Code states that “all new signs that can be graphically represented” can be object for a trademark, particularly words, drawings, letters, numbers, sounds, shape of a product or its packaging. Therefore, the particular graphic used to write a word, even if ordinary, is object not so much […]

The protection of a movie prize and above all its related prize-giving show, is entrusted to two different instruments. First of all, regarding the denomination of the prize-giving show, i.e. “The Cannes cinema festival”, “The Stand prize”, “Viareggio Carnival”, or other similar, the protection comes from the part dedicated to the trademarks of the Industrial […]

A trademark owner can prevent others using the same or similar for the same class of products or alike, but, normally, the use of that name is allowed for any other very different products. In our case, though, it is a different kind of problem, as we want to use a well renowned mark. The […]