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Unitary patent – Everybody expects the Spanish Opposition! (Part 2)
Back in March we noted that, after their previous joint challenge with Italy against the unitary patent system, Spain had filed two further actions, C-146/13 and C-147/13, at the CJEU against the European Parliament and the European Council. No details were available at the time as to the content of these actions. However, over the weekend this all changed with the publication on InfoCuria of the two actions.
Details of the actions and our initial thoughts are below. In the interests of full disclosure I should probably point out that our initial thoughts are ones of confusion: “what Treaty is that?”, “what does that mean?”, “Have you heard of Meroni?” and “Who’ll be the new Doctor?”*
The Intellectual Property Bill – Patents
Parliamentary copyright images are reproduced with the permission of Parliament
The Intellectual Property Bill is currently making its way through the Houses of Parliament. Announced as part of the Queen’s Speech earlier this month, the Intellectual Property Bill had its first reading in the House of Lords the following day.
The Bill proposes various amendments, particularly regarding designs and makes provisions for the UK to create its Unified Patent Court, in preparation for the ratification of the Unitary Patent Package.
In the first part of a series on the Intellectual Property Bill, IPCopy summarises the main proposals affecting patents. (more…)
Wearable Technology Patents
A patent application disclosing a slap bracelet supposedly relating to a rumoured Apple ‘iWatch’ did the rounds on tech blogs and webcomics when it was published earlier this year. Coincidentally, on the same day, another US patent was published for Google Glass. IPCopy takes a closer look at what can be gleaned from this pair of wearable technology patent applications.
Kim Dotcom and the Two-Factor Authentication patent: Inventor or not?
Twitter has finally got itself two-factor authentication in a bid to help stem the flow of account hacking. Following Twitter’s announcement, Kim Schmitz (better known as Kim Dotcom), the man behind Megaupload (you know, that file sharing site in a spot of hot water over in the US right now), made an announcement of his own: he, in fact, was the inventor of two-factor authentication, and holds a patent for it.
So is this true? IPCopy delves into the public records…
Unified Patent Court Agreement – now with Contents section
The Agreement on a Unified Patent Court has been available for some time now (and can be found here). One thing that’s struck me as slightly odd is that the text of the agreement doesn’t apparently come with its own contents section. Maybe the idea is that the agreement should be the last thing we look at before we go to sleep and the first thing we pick up when we jump out of bed in the morning so that we know the whole document back to front…… Maybe. Alternatively, it may just be an oversight.
Well, today, ready for you to download, print off, decorate, laminate and share with your friends is the IPcopy version of the contents section of the Agreement on a Unified Patent Court. I know, I know, it’s like all your Christmases have come at once.
Contents section only can be found here.
Consolidated version of the Agreement including contents page and corrected pages is here.
Mark Richardson 22 May 2013
[Many thanks to Jodie Everett and Danielle Ménage-Jensen for their help in preparing these documents]
I feel the need, the need for speed – accelerated prosecution in the UK
Superfast, Green Channel, accelerated prosecution – Confused?
Four years on from the launch of the lean, mean, Green Channel patent machine, will this process for accelerating UK patent prosecution still have any worth should the new Superfast patent processing service be launched?
Bits ‘n Bobs: UK Unitary Patent News
A Unified Patent Court (UPC) stakeholder group for legal professionals meeting was held in the UK this week and there was some interesting unitary patent/UPC news.
- The timetable for the unitary patent system to “go live” appears to be slipping. Remember that when the regulations and UPC agreement were being finalised it was the desire of the European Commission to see the first unitary patent grant in Spring 2014. However, we now understand that the UK is unlikely to be in a position to ratify the agreement until mid 2015. Following the 13th state to ratify the UPC Agreement, the system will come into being 4 months later. So, on the basis of the current UK timetable, the earliest the unitary patent system will come into effect is late 2015/early 2016. [That’s assuming that 12 other states have already ratified by this point] (more…)
It’s such a shame for us to part (Poisonous Divisionals)
Unusually, I’m lost for words. Not words in general, as you can see, but specific words to describe the phenomenon of self-collision between parent and divisional applications identified in European practice by Malcolm Lawrence and Marc Wilkinson of Avidity IP as the poisonous… I’d better stop there. In the light of UK Trade Mark Registration No. 2612561, I think we need to find a new generic term. “Putrid Priority” is often the real problem but as a term, this doesn’t sound like an improvement. It would be good to make some reference to the overarching phenomenon of self-collision. How about “divisional collision”? Why not – let’s see by the end of the article whether it trips off the tongue well enough as we consider its application in in Nestec S.A. et al v. Dualit Limited et al.
The 15th Draft Rules of Procedure of the UPC: What’s new? [Updated]
Recently, a copy of the 15th draft rules of procedure of the Unified Patent Court, was released. We now understand from the Bristows UPC website that this version of the 15th draft rules has not been approved by the rules committee and may be subject to further change. We will keep you updated on the official 15th draft and will link to it on IPCopy as soon as we can get our mitts on it. Before it became apparent that the circulated version was unofficial, IPCopy put together a tracked-changes version of the Rules comparing the fourteenth and (unofficial) fifteenth drafts, so you could spot the revisions easily.
We’ve decided to keep this tracked-changes version available on IPCopy for now, and when the official 15th draft is released we’ll be taking another look. For the time being, and on the understanding that some of these changes might be undone in the official version, here’s a look at the changes that caught IPCopy’s collective eye…
The Queen, Ping Pong and the Intellectual Property Bill [Updated]
On Wednesday, Her Majesty the Queen (Head of State of the UK and 15 other Commonwealth realms and Bond Girl) delivered the Queen’s Speech at the State Opening of Parliament and set out the measures the government wants to get through Parliament in the year ahead.
As well as bills relating to immigration and the new high speed rail link, the Queen’s Speech introduced the Intellectual Property Bill.
IPcopy 