Look and Feel – How to Stop Free Riders from Riding on the Coattails of Your Reputable Brand
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Senior Associate
Belgium
I am a senior associate in our Intellectual Property team based in Brussels, where I practice all aspects of IP, with a particular focus on the enforcement and management of soft IP rights – namely trade mark and copyright - across a range of industries including fashion & luxury goods, food & beverage, life sciences & healthcare, and media, entertainment & sports.
Counsel
Belgium
I am a counsel in our Brussels office where I have experience in all types of IP matters, with a particular focus on trade mark, copyright, design and patent law in the life sciences, retail & consumer, food & beverage, luxury goods and media & entertainment sectors.
Brand owners often struggle to protect their look-and-feel against free riders. A ten-year review of the EUIPO’s case-law shows that the look-and-feel of reputed marks – ranging from their logo, colour scheme to even their typical font – can be protected against imitations of this look-and-feel, even when the word elements completely differ. Hopefully, national courts follow suit. This article also contains some practical guidance on how to reach this protective status.
Protecting a brand’s look-and-feel – Relevant case-law of the EUIPO
On 29 September 2023 (B 3 159 692), the Opposition Division ruled that the semi-figurative trademark application LELE BROTHER took unfair advantage of the reputation of the semi-figurative LEGO mark. Indeed, even if the respective word elements did not bear much similarity, the EUIPO held that the specific shading of the contested sign imitated the color scheme of the reputed LEGO mark and that the contested games related goods presented a “more or less obvious” link to the goods marketed under this LEGO brand.
Read the full article here
