Banksy loses legal fight against greeting card firm over trademark of one of his own pieces

<p>The EU's intellectual property office said that Banksy's trademark for the piece Flower Thrower was made in bad faith - and rendered it "invalid in its entirety".</p><p>Pest Control Office Ltd - which handles requests dealing with the artist's works - had been embroiled in a dispute with card makers Full Colour Black Ltd.</p><p>The Flower Thrower piece is also known as Love Is In The Air and shows a masked man about to throw a bunch of flowers. Banksy created the work in Jerusalem in 2005.</p><p>Full Colour Black sells a range of cards that feature the work of the artist. They claimed a 2014 trademark for Flower Thrower should be cancelled because it had not been used.</p><p>They claimed the trademark was only filed to stop "the ongoing use of the work which he had already permitted to be reproduced".</p><p>The card company added that Banksy wrote in one of his books that "copyright is for losers".</p><p>After the legal case was started, Banksy opened his own online shop called Gross Domestic Product.</p> <p>But examiners in the cancellation division of the EU's intellectual property office were not swayed by the artist's argument.</p><p>They wrote in their decision: "It was only during the course of the present proceedings that Banksy started to sell goods but specifically stated that they were only being sold to overcome non-use for trademark proceedings and not to commercialise the goods."</p><p>They added: "It must be pointed out that another factor worthy of consideration is that he cannot be identified as the unquestionable owner of such works as his identity is hidden.</p><p>"It further cannot be established without question that the artist holds any copyrights to a graffiti.</p><p>"The contested (trademark) was filed in order for Banksy to have legal rights over the sign as he could not rely on copyright rights but that is not a function of a trademark."</p>