CLASS 99
The blog for design law, in Europe and worldwide. This weblog is written by a team of design experts and fans. To contribute, or join us, or for any other reason, email class99@marques.org.
Want to receive Class 99 by email?
Click here subscribe for free.
Click here subscribe for free.
Who we all are...
THURSDAY, 22 JULY 2010
S T R E T C H E D credibility
It is one thing to rip off a competitor. But filing your own lookalike design in their home market surely stretches the bounds of credibility. We are indebted to Dr Mark Schweitzer, of Meyer Lustenberger (sorry, "meyerlustenberger"!) and even more so to Mareike Hunfeld of Hogan Lovells, for drawing our attention to German Federal Court of Justice Decision of 22 April 2010, I ZR 89/08 (Stretched limousines). Here is a link to the excellent Hogan Lovells newsletter report of the case.
By a spooky coincidence it features the S Class stretch limo, which we covered incidentally in our "leaks" posting last week. However, that posting concerned the updated S Class. The German case concerned infringement of the original S Class stretch limo registration, RCD 000173166-0007. This was applied for in May 2004 under "deferred publication" to keep it secret until the 2005 launch. It must therefore have surprised DaimlerChrysler to see that Centigon, a competitor for limos and armoured vehicles, had applied in January 2007 to register pretty much the same thing as German design 40700389. Perhaps unsurprisingly they sued for infringement, and, perhaps unsurprisingly, they succeeded. The prior art cited included Daimler's own earlier models, but they overcame the kind of issues that sunk them in Sweden back in the day, and were upheld on validity.
We have suggested several times recently that design infringement is on the up in the auto market, see here and here. So far, the automakers seem to be winning these spats, where they have registered their designs. Posted by: David Musker @ 14.00
Tags: automobile, car design, germany, infringement, Registered Community design,
Perm-A-Link: https://www.marques.org/blogs/class99?XID=BHA146
S T R E T C H E D credibility
By a spooky coincidence it features the S Class stretch limo, which we covered incidentally in our "leaks" posting last week. However, that posting concerned the updated S Class. The German case concerned infringement of the original S Class stretch limo registration, RCD 000173166-0007. This was applied for in May 2004 under "deferred publication" to keep it secret until the 2005 launch. It must therefore have surprised DaimlerChrysler to see that Centigon, a competitor for limos and armoured vehicles, had applied in January 2007 to register pretty much the same thing as German design 40700389. Perhaps unsurprisingly they sued for infringement, and, perhaps unsurprisingly, they succeeded. The prior art cited included Daimler's own earlier models, but they overcame the kind of issues that sunk them in Sweden back in the day, and were upheld on validity.
We have suggested several times recently that design infringement is on the up in the auto market, see here and here. So far, the automakers seem to be winning these spats, where they have registered their designs. Posted by: David Musker @ 14.00
Tags: automobile, car design, germany, infringement, Registered Community design,
Perm-A-Link: https://www.marques.org/blogs/class99?XID=BHA146
MARQUES does not guarantee the accuracy of the information in this blog. The views are those of the individual contributors and do not necessarily reflect those of MARQUES. Seek professional advice before action on any information included here.
The Class 99 Archive
