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IPcopy is 5! – Our Top 10 posts from the last 5 years
While listening to the radio last week I had cause to feel old when the presenter introduced the next track as celebrating 19 years of airplay. The track in question? Britney Spears’ “Hit Me Baby One More Time”. Unbelievably this was released in 1998 and even more unbelievably it was almost considered for the group Five….
Another “where has the time gone?” moment came later in the week when our blog notification alert went off to note that IPcopy is five years old. This got us thinking about our most viewed posts and so here are our top 10 patent, trade mark and IP posts from our first five years. (more…)
Brexit, IP and the European Commission’s Position Paper
Earlier in September the European Commission published this position paper on Intellectual Property Rights (including geographical indications) in the context of negotiations under Article 50 TEU.
The position paper, which runs only to 5 pages (actually a fairly meagre 3 and a half pages once you strip out the cover sheet and white space), notes that the UK’s withdrawal from the EU will create uncertainty both for Intellectual Property Right (IPR) holders in the UK and the remaining 27 members of the EU (EU27) in relation to the scope of protection of intellectual property rights.
The position paper goes on to set out some general principles that should apply when the Withdrawal Agreement comes into force. The paper mentions trade mark rights, design rights, supplementary protection certificates (SPCs), database rights and exhaustion of rights. Much media attention was also directed toward the section on Geographical Indications (GIs).
IPcopy has summarised the main points of the paper below but feels like the paper comes across as a bit of a weak effort. It’s quite a high level document which is looking at matters pretty much only from the point of view of EU27 stakeholders. There is nothing on representation rights for EU trade mark and design attorneys (which is important for UK stakeholders as well as attorneys) and nothing on the unitary patent system.
The paper also strays, to my mind at least, into the territory of future arrangements (see reference to UK putting in place domestic legislation for GIs) which is something that Michel Barnier said wouldn’t happen until “sufficient progress” had been made on the withdrawal negotiations. Or maybe I’m reading too much into it….. (more…)
Imposter Syndrome – an IP Inclusive Webinar
Keltie was pleased to be one of the hosts of IP Inclusive’s recent webinar on Imposter Syndrome with guest speaker Jo Maughan. The session was chaired by Carol Arnold with contributions from Andrea Brewster. (more…)
Unitary Patent Package – The Ratification Game (Lithuania completes its ratification formalities)
Update (25 August 2017)
According to the website of the Council of the European Union, Lithuania has now deposited its instrument of ratification (on 24 August 2017) to become the 14th country to complete its ratification formalities. Lithuania joins Estonia, Italy, the Netherlands, Bulgaria, Finland, Portugal, Luxembourg, Malta, Denmark, Belgium, Sweden, France and Austria as one of the fourteen countries who have completed their ratification processes.
The unitary patent system requires 13 countries to ratify, including the UK, France and Germany. The EU Referendum in the UK threw the timescale into doubt last year and the Preparatory Committee recently noted that there are some additional hurdles to be overcome before the system can go live, namely securing enough approvals to the Protocol on Provisional Application (PPA) and the resolution to the challenge in the German Constitutional Court. Despite these issues the Preparatory Committee still seem to be working toward the sunrise period at the UPC starting in early 2018.
There are now enough countries to have ratified the unified patent court agreement that the system will come into effect if the UK and Germany complete their own ratification procedures and sufficient approvals to the PPA are obtained.
Now that Lithuania has completed all of the formalities we have updated our ratification infographic (for an answer to the question “What’s up with this infographic?“, please see the bottom of the post!”).
(more…)
CIPA Seminar: Validity & Infringement Opinions in the UPC Jurisdiction- Episode 6
This is another belated IPcopy report of a recent CIPA UPC seminar. This webinar looked at the issue of Infringement and Validity Opinions in the European patent landscape when (if?) the unitary patent scheme comes into effect.
Currently of course providing a pan European I&V opinion means that a bundle of EP patents need to be considered and requires the assessment of different infringement and validity laws in different countries. The seminar, run by Leythem Wall of Finnegan, asked whether UK EPAs* will be able to provide a pan European infringement and validity opinion once the Unified Patent Court opens its doors. (more…)
CIPA Seminar: Getting Legal with the Unitary patent and how to get it – Episode 5
The CIPA UP/UPC series continued in June with episode 5, “Getting Legal with the Unitary patent and how to get it” presented by Chris Mercer. A slightly belated IPcopy summary of the seminar follows…
As for the earlier entries in the series the opening of the seminar provided a recap of the basics of the unitary patent system. IPcopy won’t go over these again here but refers interested readers to our earlier posts on this lecture series here.
This seminar took a bit of a deeper dive into the rules and regulations relating to the unitary patent system and so, as well as references to the two unitary patent regulations (1257/2012 and 1260/2012) and the Unified Patent Court Agreement, we also got a look at the Rules relating to Unitary Patent Protection (UPR) and the Rules relating to Fees for Unitary Patent Protection. There was also some time spent looking at the EP Patent Register and the changes that are to be made there to accommodate European patents with unitary effect.
IPcopy has summarised some of the points that caught our eye: (more…)
IP News Nuggets
Some snippets of news today on IPcopy including .africa domain names, updates to the UPC CMS and a new IP Inclusive event. (more…)
Unitary Patent Package – The Ratification Game (Estonia completes its ratification formalities)
Update (2 August 2017)
According to the website of the Council of the European Union, Estonia has now deposited its instrument of ratification (on 1 August 2017) to become the 13th country to complete its ratification formalities. Estonia joins Italy, the Netherlands, Bulgaria, Finland, Portugal, Luxembourg, Malta, Denmark, Belgium, Sweden, France and Austria as one of the thirteen countries who have completed their ratification processes.
The unitary patent system requires 13 countries to ratify, including the UK, France and Germany. The EU Referendum in the UK threw the timescale into doubt last year and the Preparatory Committee recently noted that there are some additional hurdles to be overcome before the system can go live, namely securing enough approvals to the Protocol on Provisional Application (PPA) and the resolution to the challenge in the German Constitutional Court. Despite these issues the Preparatory Committee still seem to be working toward the sunrise period at the UPC starting in early 2018.
There are now enough countries to have ratified the unified patent court agreement that the system will come into effect if the UK and Germany complete their own ratification procedures and sufficient approvals to the PPA are obtained.
Now that Estonia has completed all of the formalities we have updated our ratification infographic (for an answer to the question “What’s up with this infographic?“, please see the bottom of the post!”).
(more…)
Patents for the Summer Holidays
Motorised ice cream cone
Summer is here which can mean only one thing. It’s time to give you a run down of the weird and wacky intersection of the vacation industry and the patent system! (more…)
CIPA Seminar: How will the unitary patent affect your patent strategy? – Episode 4
Episode 4 of the CIPA series on the unitary patent system looked at factors that might impact an applicant’s patent strategy. This entry into the CIPA UPC series covered some similar ground to the first three seminars and so we’ve tried to represent the main points in the table below. This session was notable for the extended Q&A session (which IPcopy personally enjoyed) which, in our view, suggested that there may still be some misunderstandings over how the unitary patent system will work in practice. Some of the themes from the Q&A are also discussed below along with a few other titbits of information.
The speaker, Dave Croston of Withers & Rogers, pointed out that the webinar would not be an algorithm that you could plug factors into in order to develop a patent strategy. Neither would it be an exhaustive look at all strategy based points. Rather the seminar aimed to provide a headline look at a number of the issues. (more…)
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