Redirect and Trademark Use. No infringement in case of weak signs.

On May 16, 2014 the Court of Florence was called to decide on the  likelihood of confusion between trademarks through the use of a “redirect” to another website.

In recalling the decisions of the Supreme Court according to which the judgment of confusion must be conducted less severely in the case of a comparison of weak trademarks, the Court decided that the registration of a sign as a domain name does not necessarily
determine an infringement when such trademark is used to redirect a trademark.

By its decision, the Court has rejected the plaintiff’s request for a injunctive relief for the refrain from using the sign "Alert System even in the variants "People Alert System " and “PAS” as well prohibiting the use of the domain name "Peoplealertsystem.net" and the adoption of other precautions to protect their trademarks.

Plaintiff claimed to be a company operating in the management of communication systems and which marketed a product called under the registered trademark  “Alert System”, i.e. a real time message alert system that allows the public authorities or other persons inform at the same time in a very short lapse a certain number of people.

Plaintiff argued the likeliness of confusion of defendant’s domain name “PeopleAlertSystem.net” (PAS)  with the registered trademark “Alert System” when visitors were redirected to defendant’s website.

According to the Court of Florence, the trademarks “People Alert System” and “Alert System” - can peacefully co-exist because the trademark “Alert System” is intrinsically weak to distinguish the services covered by the trademark.

The Florence Court therefore dismissed the request for an injunctive relief  because the appellant did not prove to be the holder of a strong trademark.

ENI’s Trademark is refused grant of Protection in class 25 of the Nice Classification.

In 2011 Eni S.p.A. (ENI) asked the European Court of Justice to overturn a decision of OHIM  by which it was declared that there was likelihood of confusion between the trademark EMI owned by Emi Ltd.  and the registration made by ENI for products and services in Class 25 of the Nice classification system (clothing, footwear and headgear).

By decision of 8 September 2011, the OHIM dismissed the appeal lodged by ENI believing that there was an existence of a likelihood of confusion due to the similarity of the goods covered by the mark applied for, namely clothing, as well as the visual and phonetic similarity of the signs.

The EU General Court, in its judgment of 21 May 2014 ( T-599/11 ), in dismissing the action, considered the correct decision of the OHIM Board of Appeal, which concluded for the similarity of the goods and services in question and likeliness of confusion.

The Court of Torino Confirms the trend on YouTube's Responsibility for Copyright Infringement

The Specialized Section of the Court of Torino, by order dated May 5, 2014 , dismissed the claim filed by Delta TV aimed at obtaining an injunction against Google and YouTube.

The case concerns a number of episodes of South American soap operas illegally uploaded on YouTube, which, thanks to the close ties between Google and YouTube, were among the first results which came out on the well-known search engine.

Delta TV has therefore sued Google and YouTube for copyright infringement of a claim of more than EUR 13 million and an injunction to remove all the realted videos from YouTube.

The Court of Torino has rejected Delta Tv’s claims on the basis of Articles 16 and 17 of Legislative Decree no. n . 70/2003 and by recalling case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union (in particular , the SABAM / Scarlett judgment of 24 November 2011 ) , stating that an ISP has no obligation to determine in advance whether the content uploaded by users infringe the legitimate rights of third parties and shall be liable only if, at the time it becomes aware of such infringement, it does not act expeditiously to remove or disable access to illegal content.

Copyright. After 25 years Italy is cancelled from the U.S. blacklist contained in “Special 301 Report”.

The Minister of Economic Development, Federica Guidi, announced today with satisfaction that Italy does not any longer appear in the contents of the 301 Report, the annual document of the Office of the United States Trade Representative. This means that Italy, after 25 years, leaves the infringers’ US black list.
Minister Guidi stated that this as an important result which demonstrates the government's commitment in fighting digital piracy that plagues the world of the Internet and of which Italy is one of the first victims. The new regulations of the Communication Authority, entered into force on March 31, 2014 contributed to this result improving an image of efficiency and in promoting, among other things, the potential of our exports to the United States.
Among the positive notes contained in the aforementioned report is the implementation of the enforcement mechanism created by AGCOM , while it is known that the control of peer- to-peer network is still insufficient and that the delays of the courts in judgments on disputes relating to intellectual property last still too long.