Trademark law grants right holders an exclusive right to prevent third parties from using a sign. This can readily be seen as the antithesis of freedom of expression, which arguably includes a right of third parties to non-exclusive use of a sign for a variety of purposes, ranging from informing consumers, to voicing criticism or to artistic expression. Drawing on cultural theory and– which has shown that society is involved in a constant struggle about shaping the meaning of signs (including trademarks) and– this highly original and provocative book contends that trademark law fails to sufficiently differentiate between commercial purpose and the social, political, or cultural meanings carried by one and the same sign. The author shows that the and‘functional approachand’ to justifying trademark rights taken in current jurisprudence and doctrine is deficient, in that it does not take sufficient account of the fact that trademark rights can restrict the freedom of expression of third parties. Specifically, the exercise of rights granted under the European Trademark Regulation and the national trademark rights harmonized by the European Trademark Directive can cause a disproportionate impairment of the freedom of commercial and non-commercial expression of third parties as protected by Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). The authorand’s in-depth analysis explores such elements as the following: o the economic and ethical rationales of trademark rights; o whether trademark rights under European law can be justified by these rationales; o how freedom of expression can serve as a limitation to trademark rights; o what level of protection such freedom of expression grants to third parties; o the role of trademarks of social, cultural, or political importance in public discourse; o chilling effects on public discourse that can be caused by the exercise of trademark rights; o the interpretation of provisions regulating the grant and revocation of trademark rights in light of freedom of expression; and o the interpretation of the scope of protection and the limitations of trademark rights in light of freedom of expression. In effect, the analysis serves to expand the focus of legislators, courts, and trademark registering authorities from the interests of trademark right holders, who seemingly are granted ever more protection, to the justified interests of third parties. The critical analysis of existing trademark law leads the author to clearly identify the areas of trademark law in which the law needs to be reinterpreted and the areas in which legislative action should be taken, with recommendations for a number of limitations that should aid legislators in drafting concrete amendments. The new insights and imperatives provided by this book are sure to prove useful to both courts interpreting existing provisions of trademark laws and to legislators who are faced with the challenges of drafting new rules or revising existing laws.

This volume offers a detailed analysis of the issues related to the protection of non-traditional marks. In recent years, the domain of trademark law and the scope of trademark protection has grown exponentially. Today, a wide variety of non-traditional marks, including colour, sound, smell, and shape marks, can be registered in many jurisdictions. However, this expansion of trademark protection has led to heated discussions and controversies about the impact of the protection of non-traditional marks on freedom of competition and, more generally, on socially valuable use of these or similar signs in unrelated non-commercial contexts. These tensions have also led to increasing litigation in this area across several jurisdictions. This book provides an overview of the debate and state of the law surrounding non-traditional marks at the international, regional, and national level. In particular, this book addresses relevant international treaties administered by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects to Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) as well as several regional and national legislations and leading judicial decisions in order to examine current law and practice culminating in critical reflections and suggestions on the topic. This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations.

The fields of intellectual property have broadened and deepened in so many ways that commentators struggle to keep up with the ceaseless rush of developments and hot topics. Kritika: Essays on Intellectual Property is a series that is designed to help authors escape this rush. It creates a forum for authors who wish to more deeply question, investigate and reflect upon the evolving themes and principles of the discipline.

As the first form of truly rivalrous digital property, Internet domain names raise many challenges for law and policy makers. Analyzing the ways in which past disputes have been decided by courts and arbitrators, Jacqueline Lipton offers a comprehensive, global examination of the legal, regulatory and policy issues that will shape the future of Internet domain name governance. This comprehensive examination of domain name disputes involving personal names and political and cultural issues sheds light on the need to balance trademark policy, free speech and other pressing interests such as privacy and personality rights. The author stresses that because domain names can only be registered to one person at a time, they create problems of scarcity not raised by other forms of digital assets. Also discussed are the kinds of conflicts over domain names that are not effectively addressed by existing regulations, as well as possible regulatory reforms. Internet Domain Names, Trademarks and Free Speech brings pivotal new insights to bear in intellectual property and free speech discourse. As such, policymakers, scholars and students of intellectual property, cyber law, computer law, constitutional law, and e-commerce law will find it a valuable resource.

International Intellectual Property: A Handbook of Contemporary Research provides researchers and practitioners of international intellectual property law with the necessary tools to understand the latest debates in this incredibly dynamic and complex

Intellectual property law plays a pivotal role in ensuring that luxury goods companies can recoup their investments in the creation and dissemination of their copyrighted works, trademarked logos, and patented designs. In 2011, global sales for luxury goods reached about $250 billion, and consumers in East and Southeast Asia accounted for more than 50 percent of that figure. The rapid expansion of the market has prompted some retailers to wield intellectual property against the influx of imitators and counterfeiters. The Luxury Economy and Intellectual Property comprehensively explores the rise of the luxury goods economy and the growing role of intellectual property in creating, sustaining, and regulating this economy. Leading scholars across various disciplines critically consider the industry, its foundational intellectual property laws, and the public interest and social concerns arising from the intersection of economics and law. Topics covered include defining the concept of luxury, the social life of luxury goods, concerns about distributive justice in a world flooded by luxury goods and knockoffs, the globalization of luxury goods, and the economic, social, and political ramifications of the meteoric rise of the Asian luxury goods market.

'This book fills a gap in IP law. There are many publications on substantive and procedural law in IP litigation. But it was impossible to find a book that addresses the role of the judiciary in IP like this one does. It provides unique insights into the matter from a variety of angles. It brings together editors and authors from the bench, the bar and academia coming from all over Europe, the US and Japan. This book is a must-have for everyone who has an interest in international IP litigation.' - Klaus Grabinski, Justice, Federal Court of Justice (Bundesgerichtshof), Germany 'This volume makes an important contribution to our understanding of the contours of intellectual property protection through a critical examination of the global trend to adjudicate IP disputes in specialized courts. The editors have assembled an extraordinary group of scholars, practitioners and judges to compare their experiences with various adjudicatory structures.' - Rochelle Dreyfuss, New York University, School of Law, US Intellectual Property and the Judiciaryexamines the role of judges in the development, interpretation, and application of intellectual property (IP) law and norms. In this regard, the authors engage in a comparative analysis of various national, European and international court systems while also exploring the competing and complementary roles of legislators and executive actors. Each chapter seeks to capture the comparative institutional advantages of government bodies within existing legal frameworks as well as offering a thorough examination of both the common law and civil law traditions in the context of judicial treatment of IP. The result is a series of proposals relating to the architecture of judiciaries and the functional role of judges with the goal of optimally positioning jurists to address complex issues and advance IP doctrine and policy. Featuring high-level authors from both academia and practice, the book will be of great interest to academic researchers and practicing lawyers who have a focus on IP. It will be of particular value to those who are engaged in the rapidly changing enforcement environment of intellectual property rights. Contributors include: V. Cassiers, M. Ekvad, S. Frankel, C. Geiger, D. Gervais, S. Granata, J. Griffiths, E. Izyumenko, T. Kandeva, S. Lugienbuehl, B. Lynn, S. Martin, C. Mulder, M.O. Müller, C. Nard, K. O'Malley, C.S. Petersen, A. Plomer, J. Schovsbo, X. Seuba, A. Strowel, T. Takenaka, A. von Mühlendahl, G. Würtenberger, P. Yu

This book challenges the philosophical foundations of current trademark systems in the USA and the UK. It argues that the process of trademark creation should be transformed to the more practical and realistic proposition of “co-authorship” of trademarks by both the public and trademark owners. The book develops the “Economic-Social Planning justification”, which departs from the economic argument that trademarks reduce consumer search costs, and then proposes that trademarks should be formulated in a manner which helps foster a just and attractive culture. Trademarks are thus seen as source and origin identifiers, rather than quality identifiers. The book focuses on the often ignored role of the public and their rights in trademarks and calls for the adoption of the confusion rationale for trademark protection, not the dilution individualistic rationale. The two jurisdictions of this book prove adverse effects over the rights of the public in terms of using trademarks in cultural and expressive contexts, thereby threatening the principles of freedom of expression as a human fundamental right.

The Copyright/Trademark Interface How the Expansion of Trademark Protection Is Stifling Cultural Creativity Martin Senftleben The registration of cultural icons as trademarks has become a standard protection strategy in the field of contemporary cultural productions and plays an ever-increasing role in the area of cultural heritage. Attempts to register and ‘evergreen’ the protection of cultural signs, ranging from ‘Mickey Mouse’ to the ‘Mona Lisa’, are no longer unusual. This phenomenon – characterized by the EFTA Court as trademark registrations motivated by ‘commercial greed’ – has become typical of an era where trademark law is employed strategically to withhold or remove cultural symbols from the public domain. In an extraordinary analysis of the clash between culture and commerce, and imbalances caused by protection overlaps arising from cumulative copyright and trademark protection, this book draws attention to the corrosive effect of indefinitely renewable trademark rights and underscores the necessity to safeguard central preconditions for the proper functioning of the copyright system in society at large: the freedom to use pre-existing works as reference points for the artistic discourse and building blocks for new creations, and the need to ensure the constant enrichment of the public domain. Emphasizing how overlapping copyright and trademark protection endangers the proper functioning of intellectual property rights in the literary and artistic domain, the author examines whether the intellectual property system is capable of mitigating the risks arising from cumulative protection. Such issues and topics as the following are treated in depth: the different configuration of intellectual property rights in accordance with different policy objectives and societal functions, in particular the cultural imperative in copyright law and the market transparency imperative in trademark law; problems arising from the registration of cultural icons for use on souvenir and merchandising articles; lack of sufficient safeguards in trademark law against cultural heritage branding; current scope of trademark rights, including the protection of brand value and communication functions, and the deterrent effect of trademark protection on cultural creativity; possibility of a categorical exclusion of contemporary cultural icons and cultural heritage material from trademark protection; development of a strict gatekeeper requirement of ‘use as a mark’ to prevent unjustified trademark infringement claims; development of robust, culturally based defences against trademark infringement claims; and general guidelines for the regulation of protection overlaps in intellectual property law, based on insights derived from the analysis of copyright/trademark overlaps. Drawing on aesthetic, sociological and economic theories that support initiatives to safeguard the autonomy of the literary and artistic domain and support remix activities of artists, the author suggests sound criteria for identifying signs with cultural significance that should be excluded from trademark registration. The book shows how intellectual property law can make rights cumulation strategies less attractive and avoid the loss of inner consistency and social legitimacy, easing the tension between indefinitely renewable trademark rights and the need to preserve and cultivate the public domain of cultural expressions and other intellectual creations that enjoy protection for a limited period of time, such as industrial designs and technical know-how. Its assessment criteria will assist and enable trademark examiners and judges to identify relevant cultural signs, and its proposals for regulatory responses to protection overlaps in intellectual property law will prove of great and lasting value to lawyers, policymakers, and scholars dealing with intellectual property law.

This ground-breaking book demonstrates that states are not attentive enough to the serious human rights implications of trade mark protection. Important rights to freedom of expression, health, life, benefits from science and culture, privacy, a fair trial and protection from discrimination and hate speech are often insufficiently addressed.