FRAUD ALERT

Please be informed that certain letters have been detected in which the addressees are informed that they have won a (fake) lottery prize and that a law firm is responsible for the process of verifying the payment of the lottery prize. To claim the prize, addressees are asked to send to a stated fax number their bank details, a copy of their passport and their telephone number.

Please note that these letters use the names and addresses of professional law firms, with false stamps and letterheads. In the event of any such letter purportedly being sent from ELZABURU SLP, we wish to state that our firm has no connection whatsoever with the parties sending the letters and does not undertake any kind of verification work in relation to the fake lottery prizes. 

Any parties receiving such letters should therefore refrain from providing any of the requested information and should notify their country’s relevant authorities of the attempted fraud.

Should you have any further questions, you may contact us as follows:

E-mail: antipirateria@elzaburu.es

Tel.: +34 91 7009400

Fax: +34 91 3193810


Author: Elzaburu SLP

Confirmed! The holders of licenses in Community designs may also bring claims themselves even though the license has not been entered in the register

Only some months after having given a ruling (case C-163/15)  to the effect that the holders of licenses in Community trademarks (or, rather, “European Union trademarks”, as they now are)  were entitled to bring actions for infringement against third parties even though their licenses had not been entered in the register, the Court of Justice of the European Union was asked to give a preliminary ruling on whether the holders of licenses in Community designs (as they are still called) in turn had that right.

The CJEU has given its judgment in case C-419/15 which stemmed from a request for a preliminary ruling made by the Oberlandesgericht Düsseldorf (the German court of appeal) in connection with a dispute between two German companies. The first of the two, the plaintiff, was the holder of an exclusive unrecorded license in a Community design. The defendant was the distributor of a product which allegedly infringed that design.

In these circumstances the German court referred the following questions to the CJEU: 

• May a licensee who has not been entered in the register bring claims for infringement of the rights in a registered Community design? 

• In the affirmative, may the exclusive licensee also bring an action claiming damages on its own, or may it only intervene in an action brought by the rightholder itself?