By judgment of 7 August in case C-161/17, the EU Court of Justice (ECJ) dealt with a very frequent phenomenon nowadays: the re-posting of contents on webpages other than those on which they were originally published.

On 26 April, the EU General Court (case T 554/14) upheld the appeal in which the well-known football player Lionel Messi challenged the European Union Intellectual Property Office’s (EUIPO) decision rejecting his application for the registration of the “MESSI” trademark shown below.

With a preliminary decision of 26 February 2018, the IP Court of Milan recapped the principles governing unfair competition for the violation of confidential information and the unlawful solicitation of employees (docket no. 53629/18, Judge Mrs Giani).

On 23 January, the European Court of Justice (“CJEU”) issued a preliminary ruling upon request by the Italian Council of State in case C-179/16 concerning the interpretation of Article 101 TFEU, in the well-known proceedings between Hoffman-La Roche and Novartis, of the one part, and the Italian competition authority (“AGCM”), of the other.

Early this year, a three-year long “pillow fight” engaged by Barilla came to an end with a ruling in favour of the Parma food giant (Milan IP Court, decision no. 830/2018 of 25 January 2018).*

The recent decision no. 2173/2018 of the IP Court of Milan analysed the compatibility of the disclosure of court decisions, or news related to them, with the unfair competition law, when carried out on the initiative of the interested party (rather than following an order from the Judge, which in the case at issue had been requested but not granted).

On 16 November 2017, the Italian Data Protection Authority (“Garante”) enjoined Poste Italiane S.p.A., the Italian national postal service, from using a system aimed to organise queues at the counter on the grounds that it was incompatible with data protection laws.

A recent order by the IP Court of Brescia (Docket no. 16565/17, Judges Mr Del Porto, Mr Scaffidi and Mrs Agnese) confirmed that bankrupt companies enjoy protection against unfair competition.

On 30 November, the IP Court of Appeal of Venice issued decision no. 2798/17 in a dispute between Giuseppe and Arrigo Cipriani, respectively grandson and son of Giuseppe Cipriani (founder of the famous Harry’s Bar in Venice), and Hotel Cipriani S.r.l., owner of the famed Venetian hotel. The latter was also founded by Giuseppe Cipriani “senior”, who then sold its shares in the company together with the trademark “Cipriani”.

A bill for the “Protection of individuals reporting crimes or irregularities learnt in the context of a public or private employment relationship”, already rechristened the “whistleblowing law”, was passed by the Italian Parliament on 25 November 2017, and is about to enter into force.

On 6 December 2017, the EU Court of Justice (ECJ) issued the already well-known Coty Germany ruling in case C-230/16, which discussed the legitimacy of some clauses of a selective distribution contract adopted in the context of the sale of luxury cosmetics. Specifically, Coty Germany had acted for trademark infringement against one of its distributors which sold the products on the www.amazon.de website.

On 18 October 2017, the Milan Chamber of Arbitration decided on a domain names reassignment procedure concerning two ccTLD .it domains, based on the complaint filed by a Belgian company operating in the pharmaceutical e-commerce market. The respondent had registered the two domain names in 2000, but had never used them actively.

By decision no. 5022 published on 5 May 2017, the Milan Court entirely rejected a leading Italian telephone provider’s opposition to an Italian DPA decision, which had considered unlawful and thus had enjoined, a marketing campaign consisting of contacting around five million former customers by phone, asking their consent to successively receive marketing information.

In a recent preliminary order, the IP Section of the Milan Court restated some basic principles in terms of requirements for the granting of urgent probative searches in IP litigations under Italian law (a topic we already discussed in a previous article ).

By first instance decision of 24 July 2017 (no. 8240/17), the IP Court of Milan ruled in a dispute between the two pharmaceutical companies Bayer and DOC Generici, stating that some communications spread by the latter constituted forbidden advertising of class C drugs and hence amounted to unfair competition against Bayer.

In a recent order issued in preliminary (injunction) proceedings, the Milan IP Court summarised its standpoint on jurisdiction and venue for infringements of IP rights committed online.

The Milan IP Court, on 12 July 2017, decided on a proceeding commenced by two Chinese shop owners against the Florentine fashion house Ferragamo S.p.A. (Docket no. 7940/2017).

Next month, some important amendments introduced by Regulation EU no. 2015/2424 – which we have already discussed here on this blog – to EU trademark law, governed by Regulation EC no. 207/2009, will enter into force.