IPcopy writers
ipcopy
ipcopyamelia
ipcopyaz
ipcopyben
ipcopydev
ipcopyeleni
ipcopyemily
ipcopymanuela
ipcopymark
ipcopyrichKeltie LLP
K2 IP Limited
Eye D (Case review O/094/16 – Opposition & Invalidity)
This post contains a case review of O/094/16 (EYE D) Opposition – 10 February 2016; O/094/16 (EYE D) Invalidity – 10 February 2016.
Background
The matter concerns Vision Care At Home Limited (‘VCH’) and Visioncall Limited (‘VL’), both concerned with eye care passports or reports primarily aimed at care homes for the elderly to assist staff in identifying the correct glasses to be worn by those being cared for.
VCH applied to register the mark under Application No. 3032938, as well filing a declaration of invalidity against VL’s UK Registration No. 2652006 for EYE D on the basis of Sections 47(2) and 5(4)(a) and Sections 47(1) and 3(6) of the Trade Marks Act 1994 (‘the Act’). VL later opposed VCH’s application on the basis of Sections 5(2)(b), 5(3) and 5(4)(a) and Section 3(6) of the Act. (more…)
Bad Faith and Trade Marks in China
As IPcopy discussed back in 2013, Trade Mark Squatting has long been a concern of European businesses considering entering the Chinese market. Too often, European brands which have not registered their trade marks in China at the earliest possible stage, find that their trade marks are already registered to third parties without a legitimate interest in the mark by the time China features as a potential market in their business plans.
This can cause significant disruption to businesses as these earlier ‘bad faith’ applications act as bars to their own applications. Further, whilst trade mark registration is not a legal requirement to trade in China, many businesses find that their Chinese partners will actually request it as a condition to operate. The consequences of having one’s trade mark application refused in China because of an earlier bad faith application are, therefore, compounded, as walking away and trading without a registered mark may not be a viable option. (more…)
UKIPO Issues Design Guidance following Trunki at the Supreme Court
The UK design sector is extremely important to the UK with the Design Council’s Design Report of 2015 suggesting that the UK’s design economy generated over £70 billion in gross value added (GVA). The ability to protect intellectual property is vital and for the design sector the registered design right is a crucial available means of protection.
The recent Trunki decision at the UK Supreme Court made headlines recently with some designers fearing that the decision would cause uncertainty within the design industry (see, for example, “this decision will create chaos and confusion”; the “blow to Britain’s design community”; and, “this plunges design law into an abyss”). (more…)
Forthcoming events: Managing IP’s “IP in Asia Forum”
China joined WIPO in 1980 and only established its patent system in 1985. However, in the early 2000s China began to become a significant presence on the World IP stage and in the years following 2011 more patent applications were apparently filed in China than any other patent office around the world. More recently the UKIPO has been involved in events to reinforce the “mutual understanding of the importance of intellectual property while also strengthening economic and cultural relations between the UK and China”.
The challenges of gaining IP protection and enforcing it in China along with developments in China’s Patent Law and changes to the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) are to be the subject of MIP’s IP in Asia Forum which runs on 21 June in Paris and 23 June (Brexit D-Day) in London.
Sessions during the Forum include an overview of trade mark protection in China, enforcement of IP rights in China, effective IP protection in Japan, a look at South Korea’s legal IP framework, IP commercialisation and monetisation under sharing economy in China and how to deal with IP infringement in China.
Keltie is delighted to be one of the sponsors for this event and Keltie partners Sean Cummings and Joanne Hopley will be moderators at the IP commercialisation session in London and Paris respectively.
The agendas for the Forum can be found here.
Unitary Patent Package – The Ratification Game (Bulgaria completes its ratification formalities)
Update (7 June 2016)
According to the website of the Council of the European Union, Bulgaria has now deposited its instrument of ratification (on 3 June 2016) to become the tenth country to complete its ratification formalities. Bulgaria joins Finland, Portugal, Luxembourg, Malta, Denmark, Belgium, Sweden, France and Austria as one of the ten countries who have completed their ratification processes.
The unitary patent system requires 13 countries to ratify including the UK, France and Germany meaning that just the UK, Germany and one other country are required to ratify to bring the unitary patent system into effect. The target date for the unitary patent system is currently May 2017.
(more…)
EPO News: Update on Early Certainty (EC)
The “Early Certainty from Search” scheme (ECfS) was launched by the EPO in 2014 to “provide applicants with legal certainty in Europe on pending patent applications early in the process and also to contribute to overall timeliness”.
It is IPcopy’s understanding from EPO sources that the EPO is happy with how ECfS has developed and that there are now plans to extend this into examination and opposition. (more…)
Unified Patent Court – June 2016 Update
The first update in a while popped into IPcopy’s inbox today from the UK’S UPC Taskforce. This looks like it may be the last such official update for a few weeks as the UK will be “going dark” in the period before the EU Referendum. (Hopefully the first communication after the restart won’t begin “EU Referendum Result – Oops. The rest of you can take it from here, right?”!)
Anyway, back to the main news: (more…)
The Special One – Trade Marks and Image Rights
It has been widely reported in the general press in the last few days that ‘image rights’ issues have delayed the signing of the contract that brought Jose Mourinho to Manchester United as its next manager, following the departure of Louis van Gaal. However, as of this morning it appears that these issues have been overcome with confirmation that Mourinho has signed a three-year contract.
As we know, despite the 2015 Rihanna v Topshop Appeal decision, image rights as such are not protected by the English legal system, and the more discerning IP reporters have probably correctly identified that the tricky point might evolve around the registered trade mark for Mourinho’s name. (more…)
Logic and Proportion – Enfish and Resolving the Mysteries of Alice
The US software patent environment is very different in the year following Alice v. CLS than in the year after State Street v. Signature . It was expected that when the Supreme Court finally had to take a view on eligibility of subject matter, things would change. After years of waiting for the other shoe to drop, it did (in a strange multi-stage process involving Bilski v. Kappos, Mayo v. Prometheus and Alice) – but nobody seems terribly sure where it landed. (more…)
The only alternative to the EU is chaos? Brexit and trade marks/designs discussed at the CIPA Symposium
The European Council president Donald Tusk suggested recently that Brexit could bring chaos. Does this doom laden warning extend to the world of IP?
In an earlier post we covered the discussion at the CIPA Symposium on Brexit as it related to the unitary patent system (summary: Brexit probably won’t be good for the unitary patent). In this post we recap some of the issues discussed in the sessions on general legal implications of withdrawal from the EU, the impact on European trade marks and Community registered designs and some wider implications of Brexit. (more…)
Subscribe to RSS feed
IPcopy 