On March 1, 2021, the European Patent Office (EPO) updated its Guidelines and the new update includes a substantial new section on how to patent database management systems. Given the importance of data and database protection for, e.g., artificial intelligence, this update could be significant in the next few years....
European Patent Office – draft new guidelines
The European Patent Office revises its guidelines for patent examination every two years and these normally appear in November. The last update was due in November 2020, but has been delayed because of the Covid19 pandemic and these will now come into effect on 1 March 2021. A preliminary version...
Patents and Clinical Trials
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,...
Blumenwerfer-Entscheidung des EUIPO – Bedarf es einer Nutzungsabsicht bei der Markenregistrierung?
Das Europäische Markenamt (EUIPO) hat kürzlich eine interessante Entscheidung hinsichtlich der Notwendigkeit einer Nutzungsabsicht in Bezug auf registrierte Unionsmarken gefällt. Konkret ging es um eine bereits im Jahr 2014 registrierte Bildmarke mit der Nummer 012575155, die eines der bekanntesten Gemälde des Künstlers Banksy zeigt. Es handelt sich um das Gemälde...
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...