Intellectual property

Black Friday is unquestionable one of the most profitable and busiest days of the year for retail, particularly online. Worldwide almost all online store do offer sales or special promotions on Black Friday or Cyber Monday. Already after this practice has established online, a trademark for "BLACK FRIDAY" was registered in Germany back in 2013. In 2016 a Chinese company acquired the trademark and then filed in 2017 for its extension to Austria. Based on the registered trademark, it granted exclusive rights to an Austrian company, which licensed usage rights to various partner stores against remuneration. Further, an exclusive "Black Friday-Cooperation Program" was established. Non-partners who used the event name or trademark were prosecuted and requested to either pay a license fee or refrain from running Black Friday promotions. Some followed the request and entered into license agreements. Some, however, did challenge the validity of the trademark. Finally, respective proceedings to check the actual protection of the trademark were initiated. Austrian courts now held that the trademark "BLACK FRIDAY" is not protected in Austria.

Processing operations subject to the requirement of a data protection impact assessment. Following the "White List", the data protection authority has now also issued the long-awaited "Black List" in form of a binding regulation. This provides greater clarity as to when Data Protection Impact Assessments ("DPIA") are actually to be carried out in practice in Austria. As already in the draft, the regulation does not provide an exhaustive list of processing operations that are subject to the requirement. Rather, the regulation specifies criteria - some of which require further interpretation - which shall make it necessary to carry out a detailed examination.

New legislation regulating e-cigarettes in the Czech Republic entered into force on 1 March 2017, introducing specific safety and quality requirements on e-cigarettes in the country for the first time. read more...