Tommy Hilfiger failed to register its flag as a copyrighted work in the US

Tommy Hilfiger failed to register its flag as a copyrighted work in the US. The US Copyright Office refused to register the following image:

According to the company, this flag was sufficiently original due to the fact that its representation combines the letters T, J, and H which stems from the name Thomas J. Hilfiger and three colors. Apart from this, the red rectangle element means “Going home” from a voyage.

The Office disagreed with these claims stating that the work is not original enough in order to be registered. The aforementioned combination of colors and shapes is standard and “exceedingly common for flag designs”. There wasn’t sufficient creativity in that regard. What the author of the work wants to convey as meaning is irrelevant for the originality of the work according to the US copyright case law:

“A work may be complete rubbish and utterly worthless, but copyright protection may be available for it, just as it is for the great masterpieces of imaginative literature, art and music. A work needs only be “original” in the limited sense that the author originated it by his efforts rather than slavishly copying it from the work produced by the efforts of others. (Mummery LJ, [31]). “

Source: IPKat.

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Bear in mind this if you want to register a trademark in Canada

The trademark registration process in Canada will have some significant changes this year as a result of the trademark law reform which has been addopted recently.

The main changes that have to be taken into account by all who want to protect a trademark in there are:

 1. The term of trademark protection will be reduced from 15 to 10 years.

2.  Declaration of Use will be no longer required from trademark applicants –  as it is well-known Canada, similarly to The US, has required until now such declarations which to show a real use of the sign on the market. This was one of the significant differences when it comes to trademark filing compare to Europe, for instance. But no more. Still, trademark use will remain an important element of the protection because it will be a ground for invalidation in the case of a lack of genuine use.

3. Canada will introduce Nice Classification for goods and services for the purpose of trademark filing. In that way, Canada has joined almost all countries around the world that already use this classification.

4. An additional fee will be paid for every class above the first in case of filling of a trademark application or trademark renewal.

Source: April L. Besl (Dinsmore & Shohl LLP), Lexology.