Animals seem to flourish in a trade mark environment. Professor Antoon Quaedvlieg (IP professor at Radboud University Nijmegen and also working for Dutch law firm kmvs) reflected in a speech, held at the IP dinner, organised by boek9 in Amsterdam on 31 January 2008, on the great zebra evacuation in Africa in 2015, based on a WTO arbitral decision, that found the zebra pattern an obvious infringement on the three stripes trade mark of adidas, while Birgit reports extensively on this blog with regard to the polar bear 'Flocke' story.

Today http://www.wrongdistance.com/ (I am not sure who is behind it; the 'hello' says mysteriously 'action brings good fortune ... surfing the net? I'm not sure'), which seems to be a website on eye-catching designs (design books?), has a nice item too on animals in trade marks. The anonymous author, triggered by a book found on http://www.bookonn.com/, even googled (TM) a paper called 'Animal Trademark Emblems on Fashion Apparel: A Semiotic Interpretation, which paved to way to works done by Helmut Smits (http://www.helmutsmits.nl/), that could be good food for thought for an article on artistic freedom and the scope of trade mark rights. Just two landscapes as example.