Trademark Report

There are many examples of peoples and companies who have overlooked on beneficial prospects due to the deficiency of intellectual property protection or by deteriorating rank of IP legislation. Insufficient intellectual property protection has lead to a range of cases such as piracy, intellectual property theft, cyber squatting and many more other breaches.
Breaches in trademarks within companies have become more evident in our society these days. Breach of trademark can be observed in the case of Brookfield Communications, Inc. Vs West Coast Entertainment Corp.   Brookfield alleged that the domain name violates its trademark "MovieBuff," which it’s used in selling software and services for professionals in the entertainment industry. However West Coast opposed that their slogan “The Movie Buff’s Movie Store” was used as a service mark since 1986. The Defendant countered that it had registered the “moviebuff.com” domain in 1996 and therefore a senior user of the mark. The Court rejected West Coast's effort at "tacking" its domain-name use onto its earlier slogan use. It also held that the West Coast did not indicate seniority as the domain name was a mere of registration and was not ready for actual launching until November 1998. In addition, the Court alleged that West Coast would generate a possibility of consumer confusion. Though the confusion was considered not only if they used “moviebuff” as a field name but just as a by line would create confusion.   Furthermore West Coast would be permitted to use the term with a space inserted ("movie buff"). In the end the Court alleged that the plaintiff, Brookfield, was officially recognized to an initial sanction against the Defendant’s use of its planned "moviebuff.com" web address.
In a separate case, JKA was established in Japan in 1958 to promote the martial art of karate. Since 1963 JKA was a worldwide business that contributed in providing karate education, exams and training to pupils.   In 1958 JKA goods and...