It’s nearly the end of 2014 which means that, along with the rest of the World+dog, it’s time to wheel out an End-of-Year List^TM of some description.

So here, in reverse order to try and build a modicum of excitement, are our Top 10 most read posts from 2014.

10. Unpacking the Trunki Judgement: Designs and Copyright with Magmatic vs PMS International

In at number 10 is a post from 2013 relating to the Trunki case in the High Court. Things have moved on now and we’ve had a Court of Appeal decision (see here) and more recently still the Supreme Court has given permission to appeal the Court of Appeal decision. Full details regarding the Supreme Court appeal can be found here but the “legal issue in this case relates to the significance attached to the fact that a graphical representation of a Community Registered Design shows no surface decoration”.

9. Unitary Patent Package – The Ratification Game (Malta ratifies the UPC Agreement)

At 9 is the first of a number of posts related to the Unitary Patent Package. Malta surprised everyone recently when they became the sixth country to fully ratify the Unitary Patent Court Agreement on 9 December 2014. Another 7 countries need to follow suit including the UK and Germany before the system is up and running.

8. Unitary Patent: Spanish Challenge Update 

The Advocate-General’s opinions on the Spanish challenges to the unitary patent system were actually published in November. The 8th most read post however covers a report from the hearing on 1 July 2014 at the CJEU.

7. The EPO’s Draft Rules relating to Unitary Patent Protection

This post took an early look at the draft rules from the EPO relating to the handling of unitary patents. The most recent version of these draft rules can be found here.

6. Unified Patent Court – The Italian Job

This post also qualifies as our post with the most comments and takes a look at whether the fact that Italy is part of the unified patent court agreement but not the unitary patent regulations could cause any issues.

5. Can I patent it?: A quick-guide flow chart for inventors

A slightly tongue in cheek flow chart for assessing your invention and deciding what to do……

4. New referral to EPO Enlarged Board of Appeal

Our initial post relating to T0373/12 in which the Enlarged Board has been asked whether clarity of a proposed amended claim should always be considered even if the amendment is just a combination of granted claims. A follow up post on this subject can be found here.

3. Speculation on the Unitary Patent Renewal Fees: Graphs, graphs, graphs and a prediction

The unitary patent renewal fees were an unknown quantity when this post was written back in March.

They still are!

The promise is that we’ll know the fees by the middle of 2015.

2. USPTO starts lobbing rejections from Room 101 (is this the post-Alice situation?)

This post comes from the period between the Alice decision and the recently announced revised USPTO Guidelines.

and the top most read post on IPcopy in 2014 was…..

1. European Patent Litigation Certificate (& other appropriate qualifications)

This post took a look at the draft paper relating to the European Patent Litigation Certificate. Since then we’ve had a consultation, some distinctly polarised views and the promise of an updated proposal in early 2015.

Have a great New Year everyone and see you on the other side…

Mark Richardson 30 December 2014