Region: Iceland

The Board of Appeal has overturned a decision of the Patent Office in which the latter had found that the mark CAFFE VERONA was descriptive of goods in Class 30 and deceptive as to the origin of the goods. Among other things, the board held that Icelandic consumers would not consider that goods bearing the mark originated from Verona in Italy.

29 May 2014

In <I>Swatch SA Switzerland v Ice SA Belgium</I>, the Board of Appeal has upheld a decision of the Patent Office finding that there was no likelihood of confusion between Ice SA Belgium’s mark ICE WATCH and Swatch SA Switzerland’s marks SWATCH and ISWATCH. The Patent Office and the Board of Appeal came to the same conclusion, but on slightly different grounds.

27 March 2014

In <i>Hachette Filipacchi Presse France v Elínrós Líndal Ragnarsdóttir Iceland</i>, the Board of Appeal has overturned a decision of the Patent Office finding that there was no likelihood of confusion between the marks ELLE and ELLA for goods in Class 25. Among other things, the board referred to decisions of the Supreme Court according to which the first syllable of the marks usually has more weight in the assessment of the likelihood of confusion.

22 January 2014

The Board of Appeal has held that the word mark RUSSIAN STANDARD could be registered for goods and services in Classes 25, 30, 32, 33, 35, 36 and 42, as it fulfilled the conditions for registration set forth in Article 13 of the Trademarks Act. Among other things, the board found that the mark was not descriptive of the goods and services at issue.

28 November 2013

Following the ruling of the ECJ in the <i>IP TRANSLATOR</i> case, the Patent Office has stated that, as of January 1 2014, applications for class headings will be interpreted on a “means-what-it-says” basis. The details relating to the implementation of the Patent Office's announcement are not yet available, but it was confirmed that the change will not be retroactive.

26 September 2013

In <i>Jens Gudjonsson Ltd v Jensdóttir</i>, the Reykjavik District Court has considered whether the transfer of a business to a private limited company included the transfer of the trademarks used in the business. The decision also clarifies the legal effect of the recordation of an assignment.

02 July 2013

In <i>O2 Holdings Limited UK v Stefansson</i>, the Board of Appeal has overturned a decision of the Patent Office finding that the visual similarity between the mark OZ and O2 Holdings Limited UK’s O2 marks was reduced by the fact that the mark OZ included “two letters”, while the O2 marks included “one letter and one number”. Among other things, the board held that the parties’ marks were all two-character words and shared the same initial letter.

13 June 2013

In <i>Flugleiðahótel ehf og H 57 - Flughótel Keflavík ehf v Hótel Keflavík ehf</i>, the Supreme Court has issued an injunction preventing the appellant from using the name Hótel Keflavík. Although the court denied trademark protection to the name Hótel Keflavík under the Trademarks Act, it found that the appellant’s use of that name constituted a violation of Article 15(a) of the Act on Supervision of Unfair Commercial Practices and Transparency of the Market.

18 April 2013

The Board of Appeal has upheld a decision of the Patent Office in which the latter had found that Sögubókin ehf’s figurative mark SAGABOOK for the class headings of Classes 41 and 42 was not confusingly similar to Facebook Inc’s prior FACEBOOK mark. Among other things, the board stressed that owners of registered marks that include common words must accept that such marks enjoy less protection.

03 April 2013

The Iceland Network Information Centre is now accepting registrations of domain names containing Icelandic language characters. Registrants holding corresponding non-Icelandic domain names have priority in registering domain names containing any of the specified Icelandic letters until the end of the year.

18 October 2004