Prosecution

Intellectual property rights play a crucial role in the marketing strategy of all kinds of an increasing number of companies, and it involves a set of processes, creations and communications offerings which have value for the clients, customers or society in general. Marketing necessarily generates intangible assets that may be protected by intellectual property rights. In fact, this is the first significative aspect of the influence of intellectual property rights on marketing strategies: the protection of intangible assets in a marketing campaign.

The british entrepreneur, author and motivational speaker, Shed Simove, decided to put out on the market a new dating app, conveniently called Shinder. The author created the online dating platform with the purpose of its users having one single correspondence: Shed Simove himself. 

It is increasingly becoming clear that many of the newTLD’s launched since 2013 are not viable as a business. While there are some notable exceptions such as .xyz, most have struggled to report positive numbers and are currently operating at a loss. A staggering 70% of all these domains don’t have any content whatsoever, which helps to explain why renewal rates for these domains also seem to be lower than the industry average.

With the beginning of a new civil year, several statistical indicators on Intellectual Property are posted about the preceding year, and 2017 was not the exception.

Recently, Tesla applied for a three-stripe trademark to identify its new vehicle, MODEL 3. This trademark received the attention of Adidas who moved to file an opposition against this application based on their previous trademark.

A trademark allows its owner to prevent any third party from exploring the same mark or any that can cause confusion in the consumers’ mind as to the origin of the products or services identified with the trademark.

1 - Exclusive right to use the trademark

The trademark’s registration guarantees that, in a specific territory, no one will be able to offer the same services or products that the trademark’s owner does, using the same name. This fact ensures that the trademark’s owner is the only entity with the right to use and reproduce its trademark, constituting a true legal monopoly.

2 - Advantage over competition

Before the changes resulting from IP Law No. 1/13 of July 28, 2009, trademarks and industrial designs in Burundi were registered for an unlimited period of time.

After the promulgation of the current IP Law, the deadlines for trademarks and industrial designs were officially determined, in which trademarks shall be valid for a period of 10 years from the filing date, with the possibility of indefinite renewals for the same period of time and industrial designs shall be valid for 5 years from the filing date, with the possibility of two renewals of five years each.

With the new Intellectual Property (IP) Law no. 6769, in force as of January 10th, 2017, there came a few changes to the IP system in Turkey. As of now, the registration of IP assets in Turkey is now faster and more reliable. The main changes consist of the following:

The famous former basketball player, that sued the Chinese sports trademark Qiaodan Sports, due to the misuse of a trademark with Michael Jordan’s name, in Chinese, finally saw the Chinese justice system proving him right, already in the last appeal instance.

The case that has been dragging on for more than 4 years seems to have reached an end, indeed a happy end for the NBA legend, as you may verify by the previously published article (https://inventa.com/pt/noticias/artigo/23).

The Harare Protocol on Patents, Utility Models and Industrial Designs governs the regional procedures and substantive requirements for protection of these IP rights amongst its member-states, under the Lusaka Agreement framework and put into practice by the ARIPO (African Regional Intellectual Property Office). The Protocol currently hosts 18 member-states, including amongst others Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Namibia, Sudan or Botswana.