HAIR TIES AND VIDEOGAMES

Another week of quarantine. We hope everyone is maintaining a healthy mindset and keeping healthy. Another week of IP news.

After the scrunchy battle, we now have the plastic hair tie battle

We believe that all of us are familiar with the “Claire’s” store, an American retailer of accessories, jewelry, toys, phone cases, everything very cute, pink and girly. We are also all familiar by now with this new plastic, spirally hair ties that have been going around for a few years now.

After receiving a complaint from CM National and Krasniansky alleging that Claire’s spiral hair ties were infringing their design rights, Claire’s has decided to take the matter before a Court seeking the invalidation of the design right at play, therefore, extinguishing infringement allegations.

According to Claire’s, this design protection granted in 2012 by the US Patent Office should have never been granted in the first place due to lack of novelty has proven by the existence of pre-existing products sold with this phone cord design. To support its argument, Claire’s gives the example of bracelet sold with this exact shape as well as hair ties sold since 2009 by another company.

What are your thoughts? Can someone claim infringement over the twisty design of the hair tie?

Gamevice vs. Nintendo

Gamevice is the company behind a variety of controller solutions for mobile devices designed to improve and make it easier for people to game on their phones. This company is trying to bring Nintendo to court over an alleged design infringement.

Gamevice claims that they were awarded a patent for a game controller back in August that they allege Nintendo has infringed upon. Here are the two side by side:

We will keep you updated!

Although scarce, we hope you enjoyed this week’s news. You can expect our monthly blog post next week on Thursday as usual!

Interesting links:

• When big firms ally with indigenous communities – Louis Vuitton and Oaxaca craftsmanship – FORBES - https://www.forbes.com.mx/forbes-life/louis-vuitton-y-la-maestria-artesanal-de-oaxaca-fusion-con-impacto-social/