Never Too Late: If you missed the IPKat last week!

[Simone Lorenzi]

Never Too Late: If you missed the IPKat last week!

 Simone Lorenzi Thursday, January 15, 2026 - #NeverTooLate, Book review, copyright, designs, event report, IP, Simone Lorenzi, trade marks

If you found last week's intellectual property developments a bit too heavy to lift all at once, let the Kat help lighten the load with this curated summary.

Cheese, high heels, and AI scrapers: this Kat scrutinises the week's diverse docket.

Book Review

Wissam Bentazar provided an immersive review of the new book Fashion and Intellectual Property. The volume explores fashion as a complex cultural system, examining how IP law interacts with everything from luxury goods and upcycling to cultural appropriation and the functionality of garments.

Copyright

Georgia Jenkins delved into the escalating war over data access for AI. She examined Google’s lawsuit against SerpApi for scraping search result pages (SERPs), highlighting Google's strategic pivot to relying on technological protection measures (TPMs) to control access to its infrastructure and data, a move paralleling the Reddit v. Perplexity litigation.

Oliver Fairhurst updated us on the ongoing saga of Getty Images v Stability AI. Permission to appeal has been granted on the critical issue of secondary copyright infringement—specifically whether Stable Diffusion constitutes an "infringing copy"—and Stability will seek permission from the Court of Appeal regarding the adverse trade mark findings.

Designs

Kliment Markov walked us through the CJEU’s judgment in Deity Shoes (C-323/24). The Court confirmed that EU design law does not require "genuine design activity" or intellectual effort, aligning with Cofemel, and ruled that following fashion trends does not necessarily diminish a designer's freedom in the assessment of individual character.

Trademarks

Marcel Pemsel analysed a General Court ruling concerning a 3D trade mark for a cheese shape. The Court grappled with the legacy of Formula One Licensing, ultimately annulling a BoA decision that had effectively denied distinctiveness to an earlier national mark by granting it only a "minimum" scope of protection due to its functional elements (like the hole).

IP Events and Opportunities

Jocelyn Bosse highlighted several upcoming opportunities for the IP community. The round-up included calls for papers for the UCL IBIL PhD Conference and ISHTIP, alongside details for the Sir Richard Arnold Annual Lecture and events from ATRIP and the CLA.

Image credit: Gemini AI