IP snippets: half time 2025

Benjamin N. Cardozo wrote that “The law, like the traveller, must be ready for the morrow”[1]. We would agree: one ought prudently to be right up to speed with legal developments in the monopoly ownership of intellectual property.  And with that in mind, now well past half time in 2025, here below snippets from our team at HLaw pointing up some of the key recent developments in UK and EU intellectual property law.

Post-sale confusion

The UK Supreme Court confirmed that post-sale circumstances – here, how logos on football boots would be viewed by a nearby bystander – could be taken into account when assessing the likelihood of confusion between competing trade marks.

However, the Court of Appeal was wrong to overrule the High Court’s decision that even accounting for this there was insufficient similarity between the logos to lead to post-sale confusion (Iconix Luxembourg v. Dream Pairs).

Wide-claiming examination practice

The UKIPO started examining applications for trade mark registration for unjustified wide-claiming.  Following the UK Supreme Court decision in Sky v. SkyKick, the UKIPO will raise a bad faith objection where they suspect that the applicant has no intention to use the mark across the width of the specification, e.g. because of the vast number of goods and, or services applied for.  The applicant will then need to justify its actions.

Lookalikes

The UK Supreme Court clamped down on lookalike supermarket products.  Thatchers successfully employed their trade mark registration for the THATCHERS CLOUDY LEMON CIDER 2D device mark to prevent Aldi benefitting from a copycat lemonade cider get-up (Thatchers v. Aldi).

Brexit use deadline

The five-year post Brexit grace period for genuinely using automatically-created UK trade mark registrations corresponding to pre-existing EU trade mark registrations expires on 31 December 2025.

 EU registered designs law

Phase 1 of the new EU registered design reform package came into force including a renaming of the right to a Registered EU Design (REUD), the restructuring of fees, the extension of the definition of “design” to cover animation and the permanent incorporation into EU law of the repair clause exclusion for spare parts.

Exhaustion

Despite Brexit, the UK Government maintained what is termed the “UK+” regime of exhaustion of IP rights.  Once a product protected by an IP right is legitimately sold in the UK or the EEA the IP owner cannot stop it being sold in the UK.

Patent search tool

The UKIPO launched their new digital online search tool for UK patents, called “One IPO Search”, with enhanced features making patent searching easier and more accessible to IP professionals and the public.

This piece was contributed by Robert Humphreys and Tristan Morse. Do please reach out to a member of the team if you would like to discuss matters relating to intellectual property or commercial law generally.

All the thoughts and commentary that HLaw publishes on this website, including those set out above, are subject to the terms and conditions of use of this website.  None of the above constitutes legal advice and is not to be relied upon.  Much of the above will no doubt fall out of date and conflict with future law and practice one day.  None of the above should be relied upon.  Always seek your own independent professional advice.

Humphreys Law

[1] The Growth of the Law, Yale University Press, 1924.