In trademark law, descriptive terms cannot be monopolized as trademarks. Such indications must remain available for everyone. For example, the word "apple" cannot be a trademark for apples.

This letter is clearly a marketing ploy, but I'll take the bait. There is quite a bit to unpack from Iceland's letter, with the main points relating to whether Iceland can obtain registered design...

The Open Source software movement has always suffered an image problem because people brought up to respect copyright and trademarks struggle to understand the concept of how intellectual property can be free.

In 2004, Iceland Foods Ltd secured registration at the EUIPO for the word mark ICELAND (002673374), and in 2014 for the figurative mark ICELAND (011565736), for various goods and services...

Earlier in the month, the EU General Court issued its decision on Iceland Foods Ltd's appeal of a decision of the Grand Board of Appeal of EUIPO to invalidate an EU trade mark registration for the ICELAND word mark.

A trade mark dispute about the name Iceland highlights the issue of trade marks in relation to geographic names.

On 16 July 2025, the General Court delivered an important judgment in case T-105/23 confirming the invalidity of the EU word mark "ICELAND" for a broad range of goods and services.

Trademarks are by far the most fun of the IP rights. So let's look at a few recent trademark developments. The first deals with the registration of geographic names and the others...

In two separate decisions of the 15 December 2022, Iceland Foods Ltd v Íslandsstofa (Promote Iceland) and others (Case R 1238/2019-G) and Iceland Foods Ltd v Icelandic Trademark Holding ehf...