Intellectual Property
By Harley Rose
How trademarks have been used to capitalize on the most wonderful time of the year
It’s a holiday shared and celebrated by billions of people worldwide, religious or otherwise, so it would be an obvious assumption that nobody truly owns Christmas, right? Not exactly. Many companies have recognised the profitability of the merry season and have taken advantage of it by registering Christmas-themed trademarks.
By Thein Thein Win
Myanmar, also called the “Golden Land”, is known for its many ancient golden pagodas, sacred Buddhist monasteries and gilded monuments. Myanmar people adore yellow gold (“Shwe” in the Burmese language) with gold being a common investment and store of value. It is no surprise then that locals also use “Shwe” as a name not just for people but also as business names in the hopes that the person or business bearing the name would also be successful, special and have a propensity for wealth creation like its namesake. Seeing the popularity of “Shwe”, it would be interesting to see how “Shwe”-related trademarks in Myanmar will fare now that Myanmar has enacted its new Intellectual Property Laws – which includes the Trademark Law – in early 2019.
By Hoh Jerick
’Tis the season when the force awakens fans of the Star Wars franchise around the galaxy far, far away. With “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker”, the last in the current trilogy coming out this month, let’s take a look at the various Intellectual Properties (IP) under Lucasfilm (now acquired by Disney), a film and television production company founded by George Lucas in 1971. Known for being litigious in the protection of its IP, we may run into a few cases where companies that used terms and aspects derived from the Star Wars franchise faced the wrath of the Death Star in trademark and copyright infringement lawsuits.
By Hoh Jerick
Tensions rose, jaws floored – will Spider-Man no longer be part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) after the sequel “Far From Home”? The recent uproar and disagreement between Sony Pictures and Disney hinged on the fact that fans of the MCU movie series may not be able to enjoy the portrayal of the web-slinger by actor Tom Holland any longer. The internet went awash with multiple articles and comments on what would happen to everyone’s favourite superhero, or what would become of the Marvel Universe. The issue arose when Sony, who owns the film rights to Spider-Man, disagreed with Disney (who acquired Marvel, the owner of the IP rights to Spider-Man) when Disney wanted a bigger cut from the movies that were made. Disney had proposed for a 50-50 co-financing of any future Spider-Man films between themselves and Sony, which would benefit Disney more than the current agreed amount of around 5% of the first dollar gross on any Spider-Man films that was made. But regardless of the dispute, the conglomerate giants have currently managed to compromise on a deal where the web-slinger would continue his appearances within future MCU movies.
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN in short, is a group of 10 countries located in Southeast Asia, which are, Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
Established on 8 August 1967, the purpose of ASEAN was to promote the development of the Southeast Asian region into a peaceful and stable region with a strong economy and improved standards of living.
By Amir Murshidi
The established principle of trademarks is that the protection is territorial in nature. Does that mean without a registration, trademark owners do not have rights in a particular country? Yes and no – yes in countries that adopt the “first-to-file” rule while in common law jurisdictions (Malaysia included), owners who use the trademark first in the country can still rely on unregistered rights. However, the latter requires substantial evidence to be adduced before the Court and could be slightly difficult to enforce.
What if there is no evidence of use locally? Will use of a trademark abroad constitute use in the particular country? Well, this depends on the relevant laws in each country.
By Joel Cheong
On 5 October 2011, the world lost a brilliant visionary and entrepreneur whose legacy includes a half-eaten piece of fruit, a computer animation studio whose mascot hates the letter ‘i’ with a passion, and prohibitively expensive consumer electronics products beginning with the letter ‘i’. Born on 24 February 1955, Steven Paul Jobs was a constantly hungry non-Malaysian who’s known as the other Steve from Apple who doesn’t really code or build a product.
In spite of the fact that he lacked the programming or engineering prowess of Wozniak, Gates, or Musk, he was nonetheless a prolific designer whose relentless demand for perfection resulted in a great number of iconic Apple products. It comes as no surprise, then, that there are hundreds of registered designs for products which he designed or co-designed. What’s less known is that he also contributed to the invention of many useful technologies that gave Apple products a leg up on the competition.
Think of AI and what comes to mind is an image of a naked Arnold Schwarzenegger and his equally unclothed metallic friends with ominous red glowing eyes gunning after you and your other squishy out-of-shape human friends who are deemed to be “low threat”.
Thanks to Hollywood, we may subscribe to the idea that artificial intelligence will one day achieve sentience, grow out of human control and seek to enslave all of mankind. But artificial intelligence is in fact, far less malicious, far more mundane and has made life all around much, much better.
What grounds, if any, do famous personalities have to prevent their name from being used by others under the guise of false endorsements or association? Here’s the story of what singer and song composer, “Hafiz Hamidun” (the Plaintiff), did.
Apart from his musical pursuits, the Plaintiff had also incorporated a company selling clothes including Baju Melayu (a traditional Malay outfit for men) and fabrics (hereafter referred to as “the Plaintiff’s goods”) in boutiques and online.
By P. Kandiah & Sharrmila Palanyandy
In recent years, research and development in biotechnology field, especially in medicine and agricultural biotechnology is emerging rapidly. Researchers are encouraged to patent their inventions in order to commercialise their inventions and enjoy the benefits obtained thereafter. Mostly, biotechnology inventions are associated with materials present in nature which require intervention of human being. For example, if the invention is related to Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), it needs intervention of human being to utilize genetic engineering techniques whereby genes are modified in order to produce altered genetic information which will be [Read more…]