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The UPC Rules of Procedure: Apple, Google and Samsung join forces!
IPcopy was very interested to read AmeriKat’s excellent post on IPKat about the joint letter that Apple, Google and Samung (amongst others) have sent to the Member States of the European Union, Members of the European Parliament, the European Commission and the Preparatory Committee of the Unified Patent Court. The letter which was sent to the New York Times (see NY Times article here) notes that “an effective and balanced unitary patent system has the potential to decrease the costs of obtaining patent protection, increase European competitiveness, and support the long-term growth of innovative industries in Europe and abroad”.
The letter then goes on however to raise two major concerns with the Rules of Procedure (15th Draft here), namely bifurcation and injunctions.
IPcopy’s First Birthday!
IPcopy is celebrating its first birthday today! Thank you to everyone who has been reading and commenting on the blog and also a big thank you to everyone who has contributed a post or two! The IPcopy team is looking forward to bringing you more IP related stories as we move into our second year and especially looking forward to tracking the progress of the unitary patent system as it moves towards implementation.
Our top blog post in the past year has been the Unitary patent package – Q&A post (the updated version of which is attached).
Our most read post in the last month was one that we put up a while ago – Why Malta could inadvertently block your unitary patent.
And, not counting our original “Hello World!” post, our least read post (show it some love!) is Trade Marks and Companies House.
By a happy coincidence, today is also the day that Keltie is hosting its Macmillan Coffee morning. Cakes all round!
Mark Richardson 26 September 2013
R&D Tax Credits
A group of boffins try to get their heads around the UK’s R&D tax credit system. Image from Flickr (Steve Jurvetson/jurvetson)
A report in Business Matters suggests that around 40% of companies that might be eligible for R&D tax credits do not apply for them. This supposedly equates to an average refund of £35,000 per year (tax free) that is not being claimed. In this article IPcopy takes a brief look at the subject and asks what are R&D tax credits, can I claim them and how do I go about this?
I Am the Law – I Am a UPC Judge
As the UPC judge arrived in court the problem of bifurcation suddenly didn’t seem worth worrying about (Image from Flickr under cc licence/Mooshuu)
The Preparatory Committee for the Unified Patent Court has recently launched expression of interests of candidate judges at the UPC. As noted in the cover text the Committee adopted its detailed roadmap back in June this year and one priority of the roadmap was to help the nomination process of the first group of judges and to ensure the organisation of training of candidate judges. The call for expression of interest can be found here and the rules of the pre-selection procedure here. The closing date for the call of interest is 15 November 2013 so if you are interested you haven’t got that much time to send your applications to Mr Paul van Beukering (Chairman of the Preparatory Committee).
India & the section 8 ‘trap’: Would you like a side order of red tape with your red tape?
IPcopy has previously looked at the stringent disclosure obligations that a patent applicant has to contend with during the patent application procedure in India. However, recent decisions in the Intellectual Property Appellate Board (IPAB) have indicated that those disclosure obligations may be even more stringent than previously thought.
What’s going on with the Intellectual Property Bill?
Parliamentary copyright images are reproduced with the permission of Parliament
In an earlier series of posts (see here) we covered the various aspects of the Intellectual Property Bill as it was initially introduced. However, a few months have now gone by, so what’s the state of play with the Bill?
Apple trains its Reality Distortion Field on the CJEU
Apple’s annual iPhone announcement is today and the liberal deployment of the Reality Distortion Field is expected to be trained on Fanbois the world over. However, in other Apple news comes notice from the UK Intellectual Property Office that an Apple trade mark case is being referred to the Court of Justice of the European Union (Case C-421/13 though there are no available documents at present).
The case concerns Apple’s trade mark application in respect of the layout of its stores. Yes, you read that correctly, Apple’s store layout trade mark!
UPC Rules Consultation Event – Political wrangling/mangling
IPcopy was pleased to attend the London based version of the UPC Rules of Procedure Consultation Event for Stakeholders yesterday hosted by Bristows LLP in conjunction with the IPO, CIPA and the IP Federation. We will have a post along shortly (update: this can now be found here) highlighting some of the sections in the rules that are causing a few headaches but in the meantime it is interesting to note some of the comments made by Kevin Mooney who has, of course, been heavily involved in the mammoth task of preparing the various draft rules documents. (more…)
IPcopy during late July/August
The summer holiday season is winding down now but IPcopy has been busy throughout! Just in case you’ve missed the odd article or two, here’s a summary of what we’ve been on about since late July.
New Zealand has NOT banned “software patents”
Seemingly from New Zealand to London and from New York to Kalamazoo, the Internet has been awash with news articles announcing that New Zealand has banned software patents*. There’s only one small problem: the “NZ bans software patents” title is bobbins because, simply put, New Zealand has not banned “software patents”! So what’s this hullabaloo about and why are all the popular articles such an omnishambles? (more…)
IPcopy 