Trademark Thrower: Using Banksy's Recent EU Trademark Misadventures to Assess Why Copyright Is Not "For Losers"

Authors

Shelly Kurland

Abstract

This Comment seeks to distinguish the protections and protection requirements of trademark and copyright in an international context, specifically using a recent case in which internationally known street artist Banksy lost his European Union trademark protections despite registration. This EU trademark proceeding will be utilized to analyze the requirements to maintain trademark protection in an international context and explain why those requirements are important to the integrity of intellectual property protections.

This Comment will first give an overview of trademark and copyright as intellectual property in general, then go into the specifics of the U.S. and EU trademark systems. This Comment will then evaluate why a trademark should not be used as a backup form of protection for copyright protection, and evaluate the distinctions in the U.S. and EU intellectual property systems, providing a potential solution specific to Banksy.

Recommended Citation

Shelly Kurland, Trademark Thrower: Using Banksy's Recent EU Trademark Misadventures to Assess Why Copyright Is Not "For Losers", 36 Emory Int'l L. Rev. 575 (2022).
Available at: https://scholarlycommons.law.emory.edu/eilr/vol36/iss3/4