The MARQUES Class46 bloggers would be delighted to meet their readers - that'd be you - at this year's annual MARQUES Conference in Berlin. We will be at the Marlene bar on the groundfloor of the InterContinental Berlin on Thursday, at 5 pm. Feel free to drop by, talk about the latest trade mark gossip, or even better, buy us a drink under the condition that we stop talking trade marks for half an hour.

Marlene Dietrichs' likeness, of course, has been the subject of a well-known decision by the German Federal Supreme Court (BGH) on the registrability of the likeness of a deceased celebrity as a trade mark, duly noted on Class46. Given the image on the menu of the Marlene bar, the InterContinental is lucky that the trade mark that was the subject of the BGH's decision of 24 April 2008 did not claim protection for the services of a bar (on 31 March 2010, the BGH annulled yet again a decision by the Federal Patent Court refusing to grant protection to the same trade mark [depicted below] for, among others, clothing).