General

During the 2019 Federal election, Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party (UAP) campaign featured the song “Aussies Not Gonna Cop It”. The song contained the lyrics “Australia ain’t gonna cop it, no Australia’s not gonna cop it, Aussies not gonna cop it any more”. Universal launched copyright infringement proceedings against Mr Palmer in 2019 on the […]

The Madrid Protocol is always an attractive alternative to obtaining registration of your trade mark in the US. The primary reason being that an international registration filed via the Madrid Protocol into the US does not require use of the trade mark before it is registered. Conversely, use is required for a national US trade

In this article, we discuss the maintenance requirements of member countries of the Madrid Protocol. While most members only require that the international registration be renewed via the World Intellectual Property Office (WIPO) when it falls due (10 years from lodgement), some member countries have additional maintenance requirements. The Madrid Protocol has in recent years

Further to our article on how to protect your trade marks internationally, an important part of any international brand strategy is to consider where to file your trade mark. This may sound odd; of course you will want to file your trade mark in countries where you are using, or will use your trade mark

This is the first in a series of articles concerning international trade mark protection. In this article we have outlined the ways in which brand owners in Australia can protect their trade marks internationally. How can local brand owners register trade marks internationally? First and foremost, trademark rights are territorial. Therefore, trade marks should be

In Australia, as in most countries, when filing a device/logo trade mark in black and white, you will be afforded protection for the trade mark not only in black and white but in any colour. In fact, if you want your trade mark to be protected for specific colours in Australia, you must apply for

Why are Chinese language marks important? China is Australia’s largest trading partner and for any business, protection of their brands in China should be carefully considered. However, when it comes to China, many Chinese consumers have a limited knowledge of the Latin alphabet. In fact, according to the World Population Review, the current population is around 1.4

What is a registered design? A registered design right protects the overall visual appearance of a new and distinctive product such as shape, colour, configuration, pattern and/or ornamentation. However, a registered design does not protect the function of a product – only its visual appearance. The current Designs Act 2003 (Cth) contains a number of

Since 2016, news of Brexit has dominated headlines but in the past 12 months Brexit has disappeared from the front page as COVID began dominating our newsfeed.  However, Brexit has been quietly ticking along behind the scenes. The UK’s exit from the EU came into effect on 31 January 2020 and a transition period was

The .au Domain Administration (auDA) has recently announced changes to the eligibility requirements for .com.au and .net.au domain names to come into effect from 12 April 2021. A registrant of a domain name under the .au top level domain (TLD) must, amongst other criteria, be “Australian”.  Currently, a foreign company will satisfy this criteria if