By Daniel H. Bliss
Suppose you have uncovered a copyrighted work from another that contains copyright management information such as a copyright notice. However, you want to remove or alter this copyright management information. Should you remove or alter any copyright management information from the copyrighted work? The answer is NO because there is liability!
By Abhijeet Das, Partner, Pragya Jain, Associate and Ashish Kumar, Associate, LexCounsel Law Offices
Introduction
Post-pandemic, there has been a significant rise in digital marketing worldwide. Companies are utilising platforms (“Platforms”) like Google Ads and various social media networks to connect with prospective customers. To showcase their products or services on these Platforms, businesses often use keywords or metatags to attract users searching for similar offerings. However, instances have emerged where companies use the trademarks of other businesses as keywords to advertise their own products or services. Companies are pouring huge amounts of money into ensuring their websites get noticed and as a result, some are adopting tactics like manipulating meta tags, framing, and using deceptive links to attract more visitors. Metatags are HTML elements that provide metadata about a webpage, such as descriptions or keywords, which help search engines categorize and rank pages.
As we head into a new year after a US election year, we are sure to see two things in the media, all kinds of articles on New Year’s Resolutions and all kinds of articles on what we can anticipate occurring in the inaugural year of the new administration.
So I thought that I would go with those flows and take a look at whether there are intellectual property discussions likely to be resolved this year, or whether, despite our initial commitments to stay the path to completion, such decisions will founder like so many January diets (“90% of people give up on their new year diet just 12 days into January, with 83% going on to gain back more weight than they lost”), first-quarter gym schedules (studies show that gym attendance spikes in January and remains above average through mid-March), and turn-of-the-calendar-page commitments to self-improvement. (as to keeping New Year’s Resolutions generally, “43% of people expect to fail before February, and a mind-blowing 23% do so in the first week”; only 9% succeed in achieving goals). With that description, you can see the importance of the question mark in the title, as these issues may or may not resolve in 2025, regardless of our initial intentions and commitments.
In a recent Federal Court decision, Justice Michael Wheelahan has dismissed claims against Cantarella Bros Pty Ltd (Cantarella Bros) by international coffee giant, Koninklijke Douwe Egberts BV (KDE), that its Vittoria glass coffee packaging was too similar to the famous Moccona coffee jar.
A recent decision of the Federal Court, Trial Division in Little Brown Box Pizza, LLC v. DJB (2024 FC 1592) provides guidance on the question of special circumstances that can excuse an absence of trademark use in Section 45/summary cancellation proceedings. The Court’s analysis and findings should be particularly useful to U.S./non-Canadian brand owners looking to operate franchise locations in this country who first secure a trademark registration in Canada. Those brand owners should be mindful that their registration could be cancelled for non-use unless they can show “special circumstances” that excuse such non-use and that meet the guidelines now set by the Federal Court.
The Greek Ministry of Development and Investments, which is the government authority monitoring the advertising activities and enforcing consumer protection laws, participated in the pan-European initiative for screening influencers carrying out advertising activity on social media platforms (“EU sweep on influencers”). The goals of the sweep have been on the one hand to identify influencers whose posts may mislead consumers (including an omission to disclose the advertising nature of the post) and on the other hand to check if the influencers who are traders (i.e., sell products or services through their own websites) comply with the legal obligations related to e-commerce. The controls concerned a total of 576 influencers from all over Europe, out of which 20 were Greek.
Defamation cases are hard ones in the real world.
Recent US matters involving Dominion Voting, Sara Palin, and even Cheetos show that these cases continue to interest the general public as well as legal cognoscenti. Resolving these lawsuits is dependent on understanding concepts of truth, accuracy, fact, opinion, and all manner of issues that define the context of the statements at the root of the claims. As one U.S. court noted in upholding the dismissal of a defamation claim, the law “provides redress for injuries to a person’s reputation…caused by statements that ‘tend[] to expose a person to hatred, contempt or aversion, or to induce an evil or unsavory opinion of him in the minds of a substantial number in the community,’” but “a threshold issue for resolution by the court is whether the statement alleged to have caused plaintiff an injury is reasonably susceptible to the defamatory meaning imputed to it.” As the court went to note in that case, Levin v. McPhee, 119 F.3d 189, 195 (2d Cir. 1997), “[t]he court’s threshold inquiry is guided not only by the meaning of the words as they would be commonly understood but by the words considered in the context of their publication,…as well as ‘from the expressions used as from the whole scope and apparent object of the writer.’” In the end, to succeed, a defamation suit plaintiff “must prove that the defendant published a false, defamatory statement ‘of and concerning’ the plaintiff with a certain degree of fault,” as one source summed it up. To paraphrase my opening above, “[f]amously, defamation cases are hard for plaintiffs to win, and purposefully so,” and this is especially so in the United States.
Publicity rights play an important role in India based on the culture of celebrity worship and the importance of the name, image, and likeness of sports, television and media personalities, political figures, musicians, etc. Indian intellectual property laws do not directly or explicitly recognize personality rights, but several regulations and provisions address the same. In India, the right to publicity is recognised as a part of the right to privacy. In the case of K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India[1], where the right to privacy was declared a fundamental right under Article 21 of the Constitution of India, the Supreme Court also reflected upon personality rights and observed that:
Suppose you have a design for an ornamental appearance of an article and start producing the article. Subsequently, you receive notice from an owner of a design patent that you are infringing their patent. You conduct a prior art search and find some references related to the design. Can you invalidate the design patent through an inter-parties review in the United States Patent and Trademark Office or a court proceeding based on these prior art references? The answer is YES if the prior art references either anticipate or render obvious the claimed design of the design patent.
On 17/04/2024 the Greek Parliament enacted Law No. 5103/2024 dealing with, among other issues, the “protection” and “enhancement” of Greek Music.
The Law introduces a minimum threshold of 40% Greek music (as defined in the Law) that is performed in public in various places such as casinos, malls, etc. It has both been praised as a “gift” to Greek musicians and authors and heavily criticised as eventually anti-constitutional and against EU legislation.
