The Black and white trademark color dominance in Sweden is over

Hans Eriksson published an intriguing article for IPKat discussing the issue on color assessment of trademarks in Sweden.

Until that moment, the Swedish practice in that regard was to accept that trademarks in black and white covers all color combinations for the purpose of trademark assessment in case of disputes.

Not any more. The Swedish Patent Office and the Swedish court change that position implementing the European court decision in case C-252/12 Specsavers, according to which the registration of a trademark in black and white cannot be granted a scope of protection that automatically covers all possible color combinations.

Sweden alongside Denmark and Norway was one of the few countries in the EU which has continuously used this broader approach in color assessment of trademarks.

This change of the local practice will reflect on all future applicant who has to bear in mind that when they build their trademarks strategies for the territory of Sweden.

The full article can be found here.

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Sport broadcasts are out of copyright protection in Sweden but…

The Swedish  Supreme Court ruled in a very interesting case regarding copyright protection of sport broadcasts.

In this case the Swedish company C More broadcasts hokey matches from the Swedish league through its website to every consumer with account and against the relevant payment. The broadcast happens through a link which is given to the consumer after payment though this link can be acquired by every technically knowledgeable persons.

The problem arose when another sites gave an opportunity to its users to publish such illegal links in its chats.

According to the court, the broadcasting of sport events cannot be perceived as subject to copyright protection due to the fact that there is no intellectual creation in this case, sport events exists regardless of the broadcasting which by itself can’t change them in any creative manner.

Nevertheless, the Court acknowledge that there is an infringement of the neighbouring rights on the replays which obviously are taken as an intellectual creation most probably because they are chosen carefully through intellectual efforts.

It is strange that the Court didn’t rule on the claims for infringement of different elements part of the broadcasts such as animations, logos and so on.

The conclusion here is that in every similar case of broadcast, all of its elements have to be taken into consideration so as an assessment to be made whether there is any copyright or related rights infringement or not.

Source: Eleonora Rosati for IPKat.