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Yearly Archives: 2015
Who ya gonna call? (in case of Brexit)
Now that we’ve had the General Election in the UK and the Conservatives have returned to power on their own, it looks like we’ll be getting a referendum asking whether we should stay in the EU or leave (the “hokey-cokey” referendum).
Against this political backdrop IPcopy has become aware of half-heard rumours suggesting that the possibility of the UK exiting the EU could be used in the run-up to the referendum to suggest that UK based European Patent Attorneys are not a safe bet for patent applicants outside Europe. As the story goes, because the UK could be booted out of the EU, this would have some kind of knock on effect on the ability of UK-EPAs to represent effectively at the EPO.
IPcopy would like to point out to anyone that may have heard something similar that this is clearly a load of tosh. (more…)
Coke means Coca-Cola*
On 10 May 2010, Modern Industrial & Trading Investment Co. Ltd (“Mitico”) filed a CTM application for the food and drink classes, 29, 30 and 32, which included “cola flavoured aerated waters”.
On 14 October, Coca-Cola Company (“Coca Cola”) filed an opposition against the application based on four of its earlier figurative CTMs; (more…)
UPC – Court fees and recoverable costs – some more detail
The UPC Court fees consultation was launched on 8 May 2015 and runs until midnight on 31 July 2015. Comments are requested, preferably in English, to secretariat@unified-patent-court.org.
The consultation provides for a mixture of fixed and value based fees. There are also two proposals for amendment of Rule 370 (Court fees) of the Rules of Procedure along with a table of fees and a scale of ceilings for recoverable costs. (more…)
EQE Pre-Exam 2015 – Questions on cardboard cut out
[Update 11/5/15 – it appears from the comments on DeltaPatents results blog post that non-appealing candidates have also benefitted from the decision.]
IPcopy has just learned that the EQE Examination Board has sent out what appears to be a response letter to candidates who appealed their pre-exam results based on questions 15.2 and/or 17.3, rectifying their ‘fail’ decisions to passes. The letter means that the Examination Board has effectively accepted both true and false as correct for these questions where the main point of contention was whether the prior art disclosed that cardboard comprises wood fibres. However, this is not explicitly stated in the letter and, at time of writing, the marking scheme has not been updated. (more…)
UPC Court Fees Consultation launches 8 May 2015
The UPC Preparatory Committee met this week on 5 May (Turbo Tuesday) and the big piece of news from the meeting is that the consultation document in respect of for the court fees and recoverable costs for the Unified Patent Court is ready to launch. The written consultation will run from tomorrow 8 May 2015 for 12 weeks. This means that from tomorrow we should hopefully have some idea what the fee amounts in Rule 370 of the Rules of Procedure (see page 149-150) will look like. (more…)
Spain v the Unitary Patent – CJEU gives Unanimous Points Decision to the Unitary Patent System
Unless you’ve missed it somehow, INTA is on and the average patent attorney is probably feeling a little left out as emails and photos of the latest INTA party do the rounds. Well fear not patent attorney brethren because the unitary patent system has a lot going on today.
Yes, on a day that literally no-one (but me) is calling Turbo Tuesday, we can look forward to the CJEU’s judgments in C-146/13 and C-147/13 (Spain v the Unitary Patent: the rematch) and a packed Preparatory Committee meeting in which we expect the details surrounding the European Patent Litigators Certificate to be finalised and the consultation on the court fees for the Unified Patent Court to be given the go ahead.
The Spanish result is first up and while the judgments weren’t available at the time of writing available, a press release has been, well, released which dismisses both of Spain’s actions. [Update: the judgments are now available – C-146/13 and C-147/13] (more…)
Google Introduces New Patent Marketplace to Limit Troll Activity
Today on IPcopy we have a guest post from Peter Vanderheyden of Article One Partners on the subject of Google’s new patent marketplace.
Earlier this week, Google announced the formal launch of a new patent marketplace.
“The usual patent marketplace can sometimes be challenging, especially for smaller participants who sometimes end up working with patent trolls,” said Google patent deputy counsel Allen Lo, as quoted in the Daily Mail. (more…)
Spot The Difference…. How do you Deal with Copying?
In the previous “general introduction to IP” article, we discussed various different intellectual property or “IP” rights. This time, we are examining two of these rights in more detail, the two rights invoked most commonly when encountering instances of copying of products, packaging or promotional materials: Copyright and Design Right. As noted before, these articles are designed as (brief) primers to highlight some particular elements of the subject area.
Subsistence
Copyright will subsist in the tangible expressions of your ideas and creativity. Examples of copyright works are paintings, photographs, sound or film recordings, drawings and written works, such as the scripts appearing on your product packaging or websites. Copyright does not apply to single names or titles. (more…)
IPcopy 