Give up Rene, Mobilix ain't Obelix

WHAT HAVE Obelix and Mobilix got in common? Absolutely nothing. And you've been told that before.

But that didn't stop Lés Editions Albert René from going to European Court of Justice (ECJ).

At the end of November, the Court threw out an attempt by the French publisher of the popular Asterix comics to maintain that Mobilix was too close to the character, Obelix, for a trademark to be registered.

It was a right royal battle between two French firms. The Mobilix in question is a mobile phone service operated in Denmark by Orange and ultimately owned by France Telecom.

The legal arguments involved were quite complex but in essence, the ECJ said the two were so different that they couldn’t have been confused.

What a sharp-eyed reader pointed out to the INQ is that Lés Editions Albert René has tried this on before – and lost.
Back in 2002, there was a mobile version of Linux – also called Mobilix and the French publisher tried to sue Werner Heuser – who owned the Open Source project, for trademark infringement.

A German court, however, ruled that the two "can hardly be mixed up with each other. Also, the work of Mobilix is dedicated to another audience."

A creepy case of deja vu here. Hang on, isn't that French too?

See Also
Obelix vs Linux