You can't regard "Europe" as one thing for most legal purposes, some of its countries are Civil Law jurisdiction whilst others are Common Law. Whilst there is a pan-European trademark registry both parties appear to be German I'd imagine it'll be dealt with under German law in German courts, if it ever gets that far (which I very much doubt). Despite this generally some principals do apply internationally: copyright is automatic and trademarks are a lot easier to defend if registered. Oh and some counties have a very lax attitude to intellectual property rights!

Edited December 10, 20196 yr by ckyliu

On 12/10/2019 at 2:15 PM, ClaytonYosten said:

From what I can remember, there have been a few VA's that have been messed with by attorneys from the companies they're copying. I mean, lots of them care about that petty stuff.

 I can tell you for a fact that airlines don't like VAs messing with their BRAND. If there's one thing that they don't like is losing any money due to a brand issue and that is where they don't like VAs.  It can hurts their brand image. 

For example the air Canada va is fantastic.  The team that run it are fantastic, professional and adults.   I imagine they have good a report with Air Canada,the VA isn't damaging their Brand. So they let them go about their business. 

There was an easyjet va a few years ago that started introducing easyjet painted 777s and doing virtual cargo stuff, (just to keep a hand full of teenage kids happy) now that does totally effect their brand and thus they got heavy with them when about the steps to shut them down. 

The new easyjet va is fantastic, same as air Canada is run by a dedicated bunch of people and the airline will cut them some slack. 

 

A fair point, well made, fluffy. However, in this case the VA existed prior to the airline coming up wit the same name - the airline didn't have the brand until the merger.