The early-year success of Palworld has long since waned. The hype surrounding the video game has subsided, and player numbers are far from setting new records. Just as the developer Pocketpair was about to launch the game on the PS5, a long-anticipated lawsuit from Nintendo and The Pokémon Company arrived. Time to take a closer look at the legal dispute.

Thanks to the Madrid Agreement concerning the international registration of trade marks, a single application can be filed to obtain international protection for a national or EU trade mark that has already been applied for or registered in the other member states of the Agreement. This now applies to 130 countries around the world, including the United States, Australia, Canada, China, Japan, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Qatar has now also officially joined the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO).

The most important information on trade mark registration in the US

A number of exciting questions arise in trademark law in connection with the increased use of trademarks in virtual spaces.

The geoblocking mechanisms used by Valve, the operator of the "Steam" platform, and several publishers on Steam constitute an impermissible restriction of the free internal market. At least, that is how the Court of Justice of the European Union (EuG) saw it, demonstrating that geoblocking is not completely free in the EU. In particular, the ECJ clarified that the protection of copyrights cannot per se lead to admissibility

Is the discounter damaging the brand's reputation? Aldi Süd was successfully ordered by the Düsseldorf Higher Regional Court to cease selling perfume products of the JOOP! and Calvin Klein brands.

In the second instance, the Higher Regional Court of Hamburg has confirmed that the offer of an ad blocker does not infringe the copyrights of website operators. The subject of the lawsuit was the "AdBlock Plus" offer by the manufacturer Eyeo, in which Axel Springer SE saw an infringement of its copyrights on several websites.

In its judgement of 20.4.2023 - C-775/21 and C-826/21 - the ECJ has once again commented on the concept of communication to the public in the copyright context. According to this, the playing of background music can constitute communication to the public and infringe copyright...

Germany: Competitors are protected from imitation by Section 4 No. 3 UWG. There it is regulated that a person acts unfairly if he offers goods or services that are an imitation of the goods/services of his competitor, for example, if he thereby causes avoidable deception of the customers as to the commercial origin....

For over 50 years, the Matterhorn has adorned the packaging of Toblerone - but soon the Matterhorn will have to disappear from the packaging. The reason for this is the outsourcing of parts of the production to Slovakia. As a result, the traditional Swiss chocolate no longer meets the "Swissness" criteria. The relocation of production not only affects "Swissness" legislation, but also food law declaration regulations.