Let's suppose that you have developed a new product and you want to carry out a prior art search of existing patents. There's often a misconception about the objectives for a search. There's often confusion between a search based on "freedom to operate" and "patentability". In some cases, the main...
Priority Claim for European Design Rights based on Patent Application
Can an application for a community design registration claim priority of an international patent application – and if so for how long? That was the question that the Court of Justice of the European Union had to decide in matter T-579/19. Their decision dated 14 April 2021 was very interesting...
Trade and Cooperation Agreement with UK Approved by the European Parliament
The European Parliament finally put its approval to the Trade and Cooperation Agreement between the United Kingdom and the European Union on 28 April 2021 and the Agreement came into full effect from Saturday 1 May. The Agreement includes a number of measures on protection of intellectual property which we...
International Trademark Registration Strategies
With a few exceptions, such as in the European Union or some African countries, trademarks are territorial rights and only give protection in the country in which the trademark is registered. If you are selling products and services in a large number of countries, then it may be necessary to...
Open Source Software and Patent Infringement
There's a lot of misconception about open-source software an patents. It is possible for an open-source pprogram to infringe a patent
Responding to “Patent Trolls”
How should you respond when receiving a letter about allegations of patent infringement?
No forum shopping for unfair competition cases and impact on combined trademark and unfair competition cases in Germany
A recent decision by the Higher Regional Court in Düsseldorf (reference: 20 W 11/21) states that there is no “itinerant tribunal” in unfair competition cases that occur on the Internet or in other forms of electronic media. In a decision from 16 February 2021, the Appeal Court in Düsseldorf (OLG...
Database Management Systems – the European Approach
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...