It was almost inevitable that there would be allegations of patent infringement on solutions to address the Covid19 pandemic and IP Watchdog has recently highlighted the allegation by Allele Biotechnology and Pharmaceutical's complaint that the Covid19 vaccine manufacturers infringed Allele's US Patent 10,221221 covering a tag used to track vaccine...
Priority Rights in IP
The priority right (or "right of priority") for an intellectual property right, such as a patent, industrial design, or trademark, enables an applicant for the IP right to file an application in another country and have an effective date of filing which is identical to the date of the first filing in the first...
A Patent Grace Period for the United Kingdom?
The British trade minister Liz Truss recently announced that the UK is seeking to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) trade deal. The CPTPP includes a number of provisions on intellectual property (IP) and some of these will require changes to existing UK patent law. The CPTPP requires...
Patent Grace Period
Can you still patent an invention after details of the invention have been published? The answer is yes in some countries, but not in other countries. In order for an invention to be patentable, both the criteria of novelty and inventive step / non-obviousness have to be met. In general,...
Non-Disclosure Agreements
A non-disclosure agreement (NDA) is a contract (or a part of a contract) between at least two organisations which governs confidential material, knowledge, or information that the organisations wish to share with one another, but wish to restrict access to, and not disclose the confidential information publicly. The NDA can also be...
Material Transfer Agreements
A material transfer agreement (MTA) is a contract that governs the transfer of research materials between two organizations when the recipient intends to use the transferred their own research purposes (and not for commercial purposes.
Artificial Intelligence: Challenges to the Intellectual Property Rights Framework
The European Union published in November 2020 a report on the challenges to the Intellectual Property Rights framework by the development of artificial intelligence. The report focussed in particular on the fields of copyright and patent law as this is the area in which the challenges are increasingly found. The...
Dot.EU domain names suspended
The beginning of 2021 saw the end of the transition period whilst the United Kingdom exited the European Union. As a result, companies and individuals based in the UK can no longer hold .EU domain names as only the following persons, companies or organisations are eligible to register .eu domain...
Counterfeiting and Piracy Hotspots
The European Commission’s recently published its second Counterfeit and Piracy Watch List. This list names websites and physical marketplaces located outside of the EU (but are often accessible to European consumers) that are reported to engage in, facilitate or benefit from counterfeiting and piracy. These activities undermine the intellectual property...
EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement
The European Union and the United Kingdom finally completed their negotiations on a trade and cooperation agreement on Christmas Eve. The published text is available both on the European Commission's and the UK government's website. It comprises 1246 pages of dense text including a number of annexes. In addition there...