The European Patent Office (EPO) has announced an increase in the official fees charged for European patent applications which will take effect from 1 April 2020. This is the first significant fee increase in four years, as the EPO did not apply its...
After many years of uncertainty, the UK officially left the EU on 31 January 2020. We have now entered an 11-month transition period (that ends on 31 December 2020), during which EU law remains applicable in the UK. For more details on the impact of...
On 9 January 2020, MPs gave their final backing to the bill that will implement the UK government's Brexit deal. The Commons voted in favour of the Withdrawal Agreement Bill, which will now pass to the House of Lords for further review. The bill covers...
The market for cannabis-derived products has expanded rapidly in recent years due to the legalisation of some cannabis products in several countries. As discussed in my previous article , patent filings for cannabis/cannabinoid-related inventions have also...
It has recently been reported in the national press that the anonymous artist, Banksy, is engaged in a trade mark dispute with a greetings card company, Full Colour Black. The artist is quoted to have claimed, among other things, that the company was...
Attitudes towards the use of cannabis, both recreationally and therapeutically, have shifted significantly in recent years. Recreational cannabis was legalised in Canada at the end of 2018. In the US recreational cannabis is now legal in 10 states and...
Kim Kardashian will no doubt be pleased to have been awarded $2.7 million in damages, in a court case against the fashion brand Missguided. In addition to damages, and an award of costs for Kardashian’s attorneys’ fees, an injunction was also...
Over 5 years ago, Adidas successfully registered its three stripes as a trade mark in the EU in relation to clothing, footwear and headgear. Shortly after the mark was registered, a Belgian footwear company named Shoe Branding Europe successfully applied to...
As reported in our article of 30 November 2018 , changes to the Canadian Trade-marks Act 1985 will shortly enter into force on 17 June 2019 . The key changes are summarised below. Declarations of Use and Filing Bases Following the changes, an...
In recent years, it has become increasingly difficult to obtain and enforce patents in the US directed to methods of diagnosis, particularly where the diagnostic method is based on detecting or measuring a naturally-occurring biomarker. This is a result of...
In a surprise development, Apple and Qualcomm have settled their billion dollar smartphone litigation cases worldwide. The litigation, which started in 2017, centred on an Apple complaint that Qualcomm were charging Apple a disproportionate amount for...
Over the last few years, the EPO Boards of Appeal have become more strict regarding the late filing of new facts, evidence or requests. The Boards are expected to become even more strict when the new Rules of Procedure of the Board of Appeal enter into...
The EPO’s practice on double patenting has been rather settled over the past decade. As indicated in the EPO’s Guidelines for Examination , two or more applications of the same effective date filed by the same applicant may proceed to...
The Kardashian/Jenner family have made millions by commodifying their personal lives and turning themselves into powerhouse brands. It should therefore come as little surprise that the younger generation of the family are seemingly being primed to follow in...
The term intellectual property (IP) refers to a variety of different types of legal rights. It can be quite confusing for business owners to know what IP rights they have, or what rights they should be seeking. To make matters worse, terminology is often...
Once again, the German Federal Constitutional Court (BVerfG) has listed the "Constitutional Complaint" against German ratification of the Unified Patent Court Agreement (UPCA) on the cases to be decided for the coming year . Followers of this...
IP practice around Europe is at its most inconsistent when it comes to Supplementary Protection Certificate (SPC) protection for second and further medical indication inventions. A recent Opinion of the Advocate General at the CJEU may point to a pending...
IP practice around Europe is at its most inconsistent when it comes to Supplementary Protection Certificate (SPC) protection for second and further medical indication inventions. A recent Opinion of the Advocate General at the CJEU may point to a...
It was great to share pharmaceutical patenting insights with the panel and our audience at the “Patent Challenges in the Pharma Industry” session of yesterday’s Innovation & IP Forum in Paris. There were so many interesting topics...
In what may come as a welcome departure from existing practice, an EPO board of appeal in decision T1085/13 has clarified the conditions under which patents can be granted for known compounds at higher grades of purity. A leading case concerning purity of...
In a decision that may come as somewhat of a surprise to lovers of McDonald’s Big Mac sandwich, the EUIPO cancellation division has recently opted to cancel McDonald’s EU trade mark (EUTM) registration for Big Mac , on the grounds that this...
Following the UK Parliament’s recent rejection of the Prime Minister’s draft Withdrawal Agreement, the uncertainty over Brexit continues. With the clock ticking down to 29th March and no sign of an alternative agreement being accepted by...
In a surprising turn of events, on 5 December 2018 a Technical Board of Appeal of the European Patent Office (EPO) decided that plants which are the products of essentially biological processes are not excluded from patentability. The decision (T 1063/18)...
On 14 September 2018 the UK Supreme Court unanimously opined that the marketing of generic pregabalin by Actavis would not have been an infringement of Warner-Lambert's claims directed to a further medical use of pregabalin, namely for the treatment of...
As anyone who has sought trade mark protection in Canada will know, the process can be significantly more laborious and time consuming than in many other jurisdictions, not least because of the need to identify, in respect of every term in the specification,...