Neem contact op

Omschrijft u alstublieft zo volledig en duidelijk mogelijk uw vraag of verzoek in het veld 'bericht'. 

Op dit moment is VBLA nog niet bereikbaar op een Nederlands telefoonnummer, maar wel via Skype. Indien u graag telefonisch contact op wilt nemen, maar u de kosten van het bellen naar het Verenigd Koninkrijk wilt vermijden, vermeld dan uw Skype ID of uw telefoonnummer bij uw bericht zodat VBLA u kan bellen. 

Na ontvangst van uw verzoek, neemt VBLA zo snel mogelijk contact met u op. 

Get in touch

Please describe your query as complete and clear as possible in the 'message' field.

After your request has been received, VBLA will be in touch with you shortly.

168 Velperweg
Arnhem, GE, 6824 MD
Netherlands

Van Baren Legal Advice advises creative professionals about the way they can protect their products and designs and provides them with legal tools for their business. Informal communication, good quality services and reasonable fees are its core values. info@vanbarenlegaladvice.com

News

Filtering by Tag: merken

Trademarks in Coronatimes

Arjen van Baren

Trademarks can prove to be a valuable business asset. In the current Coronavirus times this is not less true. Not only pharmaceutical companies but also people trying to take advantage of the current situation are therefore actively seeking trademark registrations related to the virus around the world. Numerous applications including either Covid-19 or Corona have yet been filed at various IP officies around the world. Many of them will most likely not be successful. In the EU, for example, the IP office (EUIPO) can refuse an application based on the argument that it should not positively assist people who wish to further their business aims by means of trademarks that offend against certain basic values of civilised society.

I’ve collected a few recent examples of interesting cases.

In China, a trademark applicant and his agent were fined for filing an application for ‘Li Wenliang’ , the name of the Chinese ophthalmologist who was the first to warn about an outbreak and died shortly afterwards. The fine was imposed for malicious filing of a trademark. Such an application is likely to cause significant social adverse effects, according to the Chinese IP bureau. The same argument applied to attempts to register the names of the key hospitals fighting the virus in Wuhan: ‘Huoshen Mountain Hospital’ and ‘Leishen Mountain Hospital’.

In the US, an applicant named The Edibles Club filed an application for a stylized version of Covid-19, to be used for T-shirts. Apple recently filed a trademark application in the US for the logo of their new COVID-19 app.

Last but not least, the pharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences, one of the many companies working on a drug against COVID-19, recently filed a trademark application in the US for the shape of a bottle (see image below) to be used for pharmaceutical preparations for the treatment of the coronavirus. This could mean that they expect their drug Remdesivir to become available on the market in the near future.

If you have any questions about trademarks, feel free to get in touch. We have expertise and experience in the field of trademarks. We also published an article on Corona and contracts.

bottle.png