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On June 22, Chanel sued an American company selling buttons from the famous French luxury house, transformed into jewelry, for trademark counterfeiting and unfair competition. This practice, known as upcycling, seems to be an ideal solution in a world where demands for sustainability and environmentally-friendly measures continue to grow. Yet trademark owners are concerned about the practice. What is upcycling? What are the risks for consumers, but also for the companies marketing these upcycled products? Upcycling is the reuse of an existing product to make a new one that is more valuable, or at least designed to be more valuable. […]

Continuing the trend set in motion several years ago by the courts and appeal courts, the Paris Court of Appeal, in a ruling dated June 30, 2023, has taken yet another step in favor of companies on the subject of employee creations. In this case, the creations concerned are photographs. Let’s leave aside the question of the originality of photographic works and their eligibility for copyright protection, which is not always easy to demonstrate and therefore to obtain, and assume that the photographs in question are perfectly original. The case in question pitted an employee photographer against his employer, the […]

Infringement of the Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) “Côtes du Rhône” and “Côtes du Rhône Villages“: Cancellation of the word and semi-figurative trademarks NEWRHONE evocative of the PDO. In 2018, SAS NEWRHONE MILLESIMES obtained registration of the NEWRHONE and trademarks with the INPI to identify “wines benefiting from the Protected Designations of Origin “Côtes du Rhône” and “Côtes du Rhône Villages” including Côtes du Rhône Crus, and other Protected Designations of Origin of the Rhône Valley” in class 33. The INAO (Institut National de l’Origine et de la Qualité) and the Syndicat général des vignerons réunis des côtes du Rhône […]

Spotlight on products that outshine their brands! A spa, a whirlpool… from the JACUZZI trademark (look at that little symbol ® at the end of the trademark, reminding us that it’s not a generic word… as the company’s recent press campaign also reminds us). Before becoming a benchmark in bubble wellness, it was the compassion and inventiveness of Candido JACUZZI in the 1940s that gave birth to a therapeutic hydrotherapy pump to relieve his grandson Kenneth of the incessant pain associated with his rheumatoid arthritis. The young man was thus able to maintain his mobility for many years. The company’s […]