Friday, 4 November 2011
New legal insurance for trademark protection in Germany as disputes grow
As electronic giant Apple files a lawsuit against a cafe owner in Bonn over infringement of its trademark, a Hamburg-based broker has released a new type of legal expenses policy for trademark protection.
Registered trademark
In a David versus Goliath battle, global corporation Apple has announced a legal dispute with the cafe owner for using a similar logo – an apple which shows the silhouette of a child’s head.
Apple filed a case at the German Patent and Trademark Office in Munich, which now has to decide whether this is indeed an trademark infringement. The dispute could go on for months.
The Hamburg-based insurance broker, GA Droege & Sohn, has developed a new legal expenses insurance policy for trademark protection. In association with Berlin-based law firm ASG Rechtsanwälte the broker has developed a policy that covers claims in trademark law as well as copyright law and competition law. Risk carrier is the legal expenses insurer Roland.
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Companies can also protect their own websites from copyright infringements by a third party as well as from unintentional infringements of anti-trust laws.
“Due to the fact that most companies—even small ones—have their own website on the internet, new legal challenges arise constantly,” said Sylvio Schiller, a lawyer at ASG, which specialises in trademark issues.
Most conventional legal expenses insurers do not pay the costs of legal disputes. “In disputes over trademarks the consequences were that legal disputes were avoided and the law was not enforced,” said Mr Schiller. He estimates that there are several hundred thousand cases per year.
Competition infringements have become easier and faster to determine, the number of warnings have increased and almost every company has had to face such a conflict, he said.
Currently, the target group for the new policy is small and medium-sized companies with no more than 20 employees. “Depending on how successful the policy is, we may think about cover for larger companies,” said Mr Schiller. Companies can buy the policy as an extra module in addition to Roland’s regular legal expenses cover, which includes cover for labour law, traffic law and others. It costs about €1,000 per year, Mr Schiller said.
Ten years ago, Roland tried to instigate a similar product in collaboration with Axa. Then, the insurers offered a patent legal expenses cover, which they gave up after some time as it proved problematical to guarantee worldwide protection, said Axa spokeswoman Jessica Voß.
Recently, the market for legal expenses insurance has started to change. A far reaching decision was taken by the Munich Higher Regional Court (Oberlandesgericht, OLG) against the insurance company D.A.S., which belongs to Munich Re-affiliate Ergo.
D.A.S. had refused to cover the costs of clients that wanted to file a suit for bad advice by their bank or insurance salesman.
The Munich insurer pointed to a clause in the small print that was also in the policies of its competitors. In times of financial crisis the insurance companies referred to those clauses and refused cover.
Clients with legal expenses cover were prevented from taking action as they had to pay the costs themselves. But the consumer protection organisation in the North Rhine Westphalia region appealed against this practice and won the case.
The judges of OLG Munich followed this ruling and decided that the clauses were unclear. Although clients could have recognised the limited cover, they could not have estimated its extent, the court judged.
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