By order no. 146/2019 published at the end of July, the Italian Data Protection Authority (DPA) issued specific provisions for the processing of special categories of data in compliance with the GDPR. Herein we will highlight the most important provisions.

Elena Martini will speak on the panel “Pan-European patent dispute resolution – options available under the current system”.

With a judgement dated 6 June 2019 (T-209/18), the EU General Court upheld EUIPO’s decision that found the design of the well-known ‘Porsche 911’ to be invalid.

The Italian Court of Cassation recently overturned a Court of Rome’s decision issued in a libel lawsuit between Ente Autonomo per le Fiere di Verona (“Ente”) and Gruppo Editoriale l’Espresso S.p.A. (“l’Espresso”), a publishing company owning, among else, the weekly magazine “L’Espresso”.

With its decision of 16 June 2019 (Case T-307/17), the EU General Court ruled on the appeal filed by Adidas AG (“Adidas”) against the decision of the Second Board of Appeal of EUIPO, relating to invalidity proceedings between Shoe Branding Europe BVBA (“SBE”) and Adidas.

By an order dated 11April 2019, the Italian Data Protection Authority (“Garante per la protezione dei dati personali”) ruled in a case of unsolicited marketing by imposing an exemplary fine of EUR 2 million on Vincall, a company that provides distance marketing and distance selling services on behalf of different companies.

With a recent decision, the Italian Data Protection Authority (“Garante”) provided some useful guidelines regarding the data breach procedure in case of a personal data violation.

A recent decision of the Court of Turin (no. 940/2019), finding that the image rights of the famous Hollywood diva Audrey Hepburn had been unlawfully exploited, marked a new victory for her heirs (in favour of whom the Court of Milan had already ruled with its decision no. 766/2015).

The Court of Cassation, by order no. 9500 of 04 April 2019, ruled again on the necessity of staying infringement proceedings when the proceeding on the patent’s invalidity is pending.

By order of 6 May 2019, the Milan IP Court ruled in favour of the owner of a well-known textile brand against a retailer who marketed its products in substantially undervaluing ways, and which was therefore enjoined from this activity.

With a recent judgement, the EU General Court ruled on the matter of visual and conceptual similarity between signs and, overturning EUIPO’s decision, found that the well-known Apple trademark and the Pear trademark (shown below) cannot be confused.

With its decision no. 7708 of 19 March 2019 in the lawsuit brought by RTI against Yahoo! Inc. and Yahoo! Italia Srl (herein, Yahoo!) the Italian Court of Cassation established key principles on the hosting provider’s liability; the decision will probably become the landmark precedent for online infringement litigations in the next years.

With a decision dated 2 May 2019, the European Court of Justice (C-614/17) ruled on three preliminary questions raised by the Tribunal Supremo (the Spanish Supreme Court), concerning the interpretation of Article 13(1)(b) of Regulation EC no. 2006/510 in the matter of protection of designations of origin (PDOs) against unlawful evocations.

With decision no. 7709/2019, the Court of Cassation ruled again on the Internet Service Provider’s liability – an issue of which we talked about amongst others here and here on this blog.

On 22 April, the Turin IP Court issued an interesting judgment (no. 2256/16) on the long-term coexistence of two identical trademarks used for identical products. The Judges looked specifically at the effects of such co-existence for the purposes of the so-called “validation” of the later trademark and the infringement of the earlier one.

With sentence no. 3512 of 15 February 2019, the IP Court of Rome ruled on a case between Reti Televisive Italiane SpA (RTI) and Mrs. V.P., on the one hand, and Facebook Inc. and Facebook Ireland Limited (together, Facebook), on the other.

With an order published on 5 March 2019 (docket number 1588/2015), the Supreme Court of Cassation, overturning the decision of Rome Court of Appeal, ruled on the validity of patents, recalling that the limits of protection of the invention must be construed taking into consideration the claims, the description and the drawings attached to the patent.

With an order issued on 26 February 2019, in the proceeding with docket number 16185/2018, the Court of Bari ruled on the infringement of the well-known Supreme trademark by the Supreme Gold trademark.

On 14 January the IP Court of Milan issued an interesting precautionary order concerning the protection of the works of the street art artist known under the pseudonym Banksy, whose identity is unknown.