On October 6, 2015, the European Court of Justice (“ECJ”) ruled in the “Schrems”case that the U.S.-EU Safe Harbor framework on the transfer of personal data from Europe to the United States, was invalid.

The earlier is the owner of the French and Community semi-figurative trademark “vente-privee.com”, underlined with a pink line drawn in diagonal, enriched by two pink butterflies.

The latter is the owner of the French trademark “showroomprive.com” and expected the registration of a community semi-figurative trademark “showroomprive.com” enhanced with some stylized and coloured elements.

However, on August 1, 2012, the Office for the Harmonisation of the Internal Market (herein, “OHIM“) refused such application for “SHOWROOMPRIVE.COM” on the ground that the trademark was not distinctive enough and, much to the contrary, was descriptive for the targeted goods and services.

At the same time, on September 5, 2012, Showroomprive.com assigned before the Paris first instance Court, its competitor, Vente-privee.com, in order to invalidate the “vente-privee.com” trademark for lack of distinctiveness. This trademark had been registered since October 14, 2004 without any complains from ShowroomPrive.com or any other third party.

The first instance Court welcomed Showroomprive.com’s request and decided that “the terms ‘venteprivee.com’ was, at the time of the application date, descriptive of the company’s business activity for every consumer wishing to buy online discounted products; and thus such use was necessary to designate its private sales activity.” In addition, the Paris Court highlighted that the trademark had not acquired any “distinctiveness through its use, thus enabling the term to take ownership of generic names, when such names must remain available for all the economic actors from a given sector.

Meanwhile, on December 6t, 2013, in another law suit, Vente-privee.com assigned the owner of similar domain names (namely vente-priveee.com, ventprivee.com, venteprives.com) on the basis of its cybersquatting activities. The French first instance Court highlighted that the semi-figurative “vente-privée.com” trademark had to be considered as a well-known trademark. Indeed, in this case, the Court decided that the “vente-privée.com” trademark had a strong reputation due to the fact that a significant part of the relevant public made a connection between the trademark and its associated goods and services.

In conclusion, the decision concerning the semi-figurative trademark should not affect the word trademark “SHOWROOMPRIVE.COM” registered in 2007 by the OHIM. Nevertheless, we can legally wonder about the consequences in case of further contestation regarding a word mark and a close watch should be kept on any follow up evolution.

First published in K&L Gates Trade marks and unfair competition Bulletin no. 1/2014 (PDF) in collaboration with Alexandra Bernard.

Of the difficulty to frame photograph as a protected work and its consequences on social network.

On December 18, 2012, further to its acquisition by Facebook, Instagram unveiled its new terms of use, to be enforced on January 16, 2013. At the case of the redrafting of the contract tying the social network to it, users stood much-discussed undertaking which allowed the company to monetize its users’ photographs, notably for commercial and advertising purposes. Facing a major uproar from internet users Instagram elected to withdraw this provision and apologized fondly. However, such withdrawal only targeted the cancellation of clear terms of what the terms of use provided from the very beginning: the grant by the users to Instagram of the right to use the photographs uploaded on its platform.

Two days later, the courts of Paris rendered a judgment (TGI Paris, 3ème chambre, 4ème section, Jugement du 20 décembre 2012 – Philippe G, Alexandra J c./ Paul M. (in French)) which may jeopardize the grievances of the social network users. Indeed, the judges refused to recognize that the airplane photographs take by individuals bore sufficient originality to allow any protection under French intellectual property law.

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After almost a decade of vigorous debate among interested parties, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has finally issued a decision that moves toward unifying the European perspective on internet filtering. While the CJEU decision itself is specific to the gambling industry, the core principles of the decision may be extended to other fields.

Several recent decisions by the CJEU put into a strict perspective the validity of the position held by certain European member states with regard to gambling, namely state-sponsored monopolies [see for instance CJEU case C-42/07]. At the same time, the opening of the online gambling field to authorized operators in European countries, such as France, went hand-in-hand with the creation of administrative agencies. Those agencies, such as France’s Autorité de Régulation des Jeux en Ligne (ARJEL) possess, among other things, the prerogatives and powers to demand the take-down of crossborder gambling and gaming websites deemed illegal under national law and accessible by individuals connecting from the same country.

On the other hand, on the copyright and peer-to-peer front, collective rights management agencies have been
heavily involved in regulating the contents made available on the Internet. Indeed, for the past decade since the
appearance of Napster, right-holders have been trying relentlessly to limit the impact of online copyright infringement, by pursuing action against individual downloaders in the first place, and then against the website publishers making illegal content accessible.

On both fronts, though, the temptation for grasping control over Internet content can be seen lingering around. In the SABAM vs. Scarlet decision (CJEU case C-70/10), published on November 24, 2011, the CJEU applied a five-prong
approach on Internet control ordered by third parties on Internet Service Providers (ISPs) that may be extended to the gaming and gambling industry.

In SABAM, the Belgian collective rights management entity had requested ISPs to cut access to several websites that allowed the illegal download of copyrighted material.

Although the national laws of EU member states specify the requirements for obtaining an injunction against the operator of an online service deemed illegal, such as national law must be compliant with the mandatory limitations
set forth by European law, notably in the e-Commerce Directive 2000/31/EC. The e-Commerce Directive provides in Article 15.1 that “Member states shall not impose a general obligation on providers, when providing the services covered by Articles 12, 13, and 14, to monitor the information which they transmit or store, nor a general obligation actively to seek facts or circumstances indicating illegal activity.” This has been understood by many commentators as the founding European net neutrality principle.

As a consequence of this European net neutrality principle, national authorities may not adopt measures which would require an ISP to carry out general monitoring of the information that it transmits on its network.

In the SABAM decision, the Belgian courts requested that the CJEU clarify whether European law would permit an injunction that would require an ISP to implement a filtering system for all electronic communication transiting through its services where such filtering would:

  • Apply impartially to all of the ISP clients;
  • In a preventive manner, as opposed to a reactive manner where infringing content, once identified and notified by the right-holders, would be dealt with;
  • In a permanent manner, as opposed to a temporary measure; and
  • At the sole costs of the ISP.

Following its advocate-general, who had concluded in the preceding legal opinion that this scheme was obviously disproportionate with regard to the rights to be protected, the court held that the implemented measures have to be “fair and proportionate and must not be excessively costly.

Additionally, the court foresaw the practical consequences of such general filtering and blocking—the ISPs need to appreciate the legality of the online services, which would thus “require active observation of all electronic communications conducted on the network of the ISP concerned and, consequently, would encompass all information to be transmitted and all customers using that network.” In other words, instead of relying on an evidenced take-down request from the right-holders, such right-holders were requesting that the ISPs themselves perform all the necessary checks on all the material they make available to ensure no infringing content would be available. At the same time, such a measure would have been in complete contradiction with the founding principle of Article 15 of the e-commerce directive and the net neutrality principle.

Moreover, the court drew attention to the fact that to permit the ISP to be the judge of what internet content was to be deemed illegal would likely adversely affect freedom of expression by blocking, albeit in a collateral manner, legal
services and information. According to the court, the ISP bears a technical role in the individual’s access to the Internet.
Therefore, its involvement should be limited to such a technical role, except in cases where the obviousness of the illegality of the targeted content prevails.

Finally, to the great satisfaction of many privacy advocates, the court seized the opportunity to state incidentally that the IP addresses used for ISP subscribers’ identification purposes were personal data. Indeed, in spite of the strict regulation of personal data processing in Europe, many national laws of agencies, in order to implement fast proceedings against illegal online file-sharing, were quick to dismiss the need for compliance with data protection
law. This latest observation also calls for moderation in the processing of online data and information, be it by rightholders, collective rights management organizations, or administrative agencies all over Europe.

First publication: K&L Gates – Global Government Solution 2012 with E. Drouard