Reputation in European Trade Mark Law: A Re-examination

Under the harmonised European trade mark regime marks with a reputation enjoy expanded protection. This article casts doubt on whether this ‘reputational trigger’ can be justified. It then explores some difficult operational questions about the way the reputation threshold works in cases where the mark enjoys fame only in niche markets or in a limited geographical area, the aim being to illustrate further why reputation is an unsatisfactory trigger for a different type of trade mark protection. Finally, it looks at some of the evidential difficulties involved in adjudicating disputes in which expanded protection is being claimed. It concludes by suggesting that if the evidential problems we identify were tackled the reputation threshold could be abandoned

Riding on the Coat-Tails of Traditional Cultural Expressions

Matters related to the protection of traditional cultural expressions (‘TCEs’) or expressions of folklore (‘EoFs’) are sensitive and intricate as a blend of legal, economic, philosophical and anthropological considerations jostle to capture their core features. This results in disparate views surrounding what should qualify as TCEs or EoFs, who should be considered their ‘owner’ (assuming that ownership per se is conceptually compatible with these items), which is the most appropriate legal protection regime and how broad their scope of protection should be. Drawing from these various accounts on TCEs, this article focuses on the interaction between TCEs and EoFs originating on the European continent and the European Union (‘EU’) trade mark legislation. Specifically, this article examines whether the limitations of the effects of trade mark rights and of the absolute grounds of refusal, as developed by the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union, are effective in preserving the cohesion of TCEs. This article advances the thesis that registration of TCEs and EoFs as trade marks generates an imbalance between the rights of the trade mark owner and the defences available to others under the EU trade mark law framework. Furthermore, such an imbalance is likely to hinder the unfettered circulation of TCEs and undermine their original meaning. Lastly, in some cases, trade mark registration of TCEs contributes to their appropriation and misappropriation. The article concludes that, de lege ferenda, the direct exclusion of TCEs as eligible subject matter for trade mark registration is preferable to seeking a post factum remedy

Successful removal of a penile constriction wedding ring in a rural area

Background. Penile strangulation is a rarely described medical emergency. Removal of the strangulating object is challenging, with a lack of proper guidelines.Objective. To describe the challenges faced during an attempt to urgently remove a metal object (wedding ring) constricting an erect penis.Method. We report a case of penile strangulation with a wedding ring in an adult man who presented at Van Velden Hospital casualty department, Limpopo, South Africa, and review the related literature.Result. The ring was successfully removed using an aspiration technique (via a pink needle).Conclusion. No proper guidelines exist for the treatment of this condition, so the ‘best method’ is the one with a successful outcome

Leuven-Haifa High-Resolution Fundus Image Dataset for Retinal Blood Vessel Segmentation and Glaucoma Diagnosis

Abstract The Leuven-Haifa dataset contains 240 disc-centered fundus images of 224 unique patients (75 patients with normal tension glaucoma, 63 patients with high tension glaucoma, 30 patients with other eye diseases and 56 healthy controls) from the University Hospitals of Leuven. The arterioles and venules of these images were both annotated by master students in medicine and corrected by a senior annotator. All senior segmentation corrections are provided as well as the junior segmentations of the test set. An open-source toolbox for the parametrization of segmentations was developed. Diagnosis, age, sex, vascular parameters as well as a quality score are provided as metadata. Potential reuse is envisioned as the development or external validation of blood vessels segmentation algorithms or study of the vasculature in glaucoma and the development of glaucoma diagnosis algorithms. The dataset is available on the KU Leuven Research Data Repository (RDR)