Keltie LLP
K2 IP Limited
Location, Location, Location (of divisions of the Unified Patent Court)
Along with all the other preparations that are required to implement the unitary patent package in the various participating member states, rumblings are often heard regarding the potential location of the local and regional divisions of the Unified Patent Court. This week IPcopy has heard/seen material relating to a potential local division in Ireland and also the possible setting up of a regional “Nordic-Baltic” division in Sweden, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania (Thanks to reader Hans van de Heuvel for the heads up regarding the Nordic-Baltic news). (more…)
And then there were three? President Hollande signs off on ratification of UPC Agreement
Following the recent adoption of the Agreement of the Unified Patent Court by the French National Assembly comes news that the French President, François Hollande, has now promulgated the law by signing off on the text in Paris on 24th February 2014.
IP Federation position on unregistered designs and the IP Bill
Parliamentary copyright images are reproduced with the permission of Parliament
The Intellectual Property Bill is still awaiting a date for the Report stage in the House of Commons. One of the parts of the Bill that got a lot a discussion time was, of course, Clause 13 which introduces criminal sanctions for the copying of registered designs.
One point of discussion in relation to Clause 13 was its possible expansion to include unregistered design rights. This is something that ACID (Anti-copying in Design) in particular is keen to see happen. IPcopy would prefer that Clause 13 wasn’t in the Intellectual Property Bill at all but the registered design sanctions of the clause appear to be here to stay. However, extending the clause to cover unregistered designs would, in this ipcopywriter’s opinion, be a disaster.
Recently, the IP Federation has issued a policy paper on this issue and they have the following to say on the matter: (more…)
IP Hit or Miss? The Lego Movie
70s Lego Superman | Present Day Lego Superman
The Lego movie. Is. Awesome. And certainly much more fun than revising for the EQE pre-exam, which is what I probably should have been doing with my Saturday afternoon (here’s hoping the claim analysis section is all about co-operable building blocks). There are thrills; there are spills; there’s some beautifully poignant humour. It’s the Matrix meets Toy Story 3.
Enough advertising: the reason I get to write about the Lego Movie here is that there’s a delightful little patent sub-sub-sub-plot involving Lego Batman. Which gives me the perfect excuse to assess the IP reference for our IP Hit or Miss series, in the interests of IP education, you understand. The potential ‘spoilers’ are so minor as to be barely worthy of the word, but if you don’t want to see a few paraphrased words from the movie, you may wish to look away now.
IP in the Space Sector
Despite having had an interest in all things extra-terrestrial from an early age, I’ve been regularly dumb-struck by innovations in space-related technology both upstream (things in space or launching them there) and downstream (things down here using technology or data from space). Planet Labs are deploying a constellation of 28 tiny imaging satellites, each costing a fraction of the price of typical commercial satellites, promising near-global, daily imaging. Brokers like Spaceflight Services put these and other small satellites into orbit by squeezing them into the space inside launch vehicles around larger satellites. Terra Recovery image landfill sites from space, to figure out what their robots could mine from them. You can even buy your own satellite launched and ready to do your bidding, evil or otherwise (laser weapons not included).
Prompted by such giant leaps for space-faring mankind, and along with the likes of World IP Review and IPKat, we’ve been pondering some idiosyncrasies in IP in the space sector.
First hint of Unified Patent Court opt-out fee?
Members of IPcopy are always on the look out for snippets of unitary patent and unified patent court news and it was during such a search this week that we came across a conference report of a Unitary Patent Package Conference that was held in Amsterdam on 6 February 2014.
The full report of the conference can be found here. Having skimmed through the conference summary we noted a few points of interest which are detailed below. In particular we were interested to see what are apparently the first potential figures for the fee for opting a European patent out from the exclusive competence of the Unified Patent Court (the “opt-out fee”). These comments came from someone who is presumably familiar with the matter, Kevin Mooney of the Drafting Committee for the Rules of Procedure of the UPC. (more…)
Branding – is monolithic best?
BMW: A monolithic brand. Shown here on the IPcopy news wagon
Consider a company selling non-pharmaceutical products to the general public (pharmaceutical products raise special issues, not discussed here).
The possible extremes of branding architecture are these:
- “one product [or product type, or service (type)], one brand”; and
- “monolithic”. (more…)
The EPO’s Draft Rules relating to Unitary Patent Protection – Part II
Last week Emily took a look at the EPO’s draft rules relating to Unitary Patent Protection. As noted in last week’s post the document appeared to be a work in progress (it was dated August 2013) and in the comments section to that post Antonio Pizzoli (Googling Wizard, First Class) pointed us at an updated version of the EPO’s draft rules which can be accessed here.
The August draft ran to 22 rules. The updated version only discusses draft rules 1 to 11. Furthermore, we note that the updated version introduces a new rule 4 meaning that there are some numbering changes.
We’ve had a quick look at the updated document and note that there has been some progress on some of the issues raised in Emily’s review. The following areas in particular interested us: (more…)
Have A Break, Have A KitKat waiting for clarification from CJEU on three-dimensional mark
Nestlé applied to register its famous four-fingered Kit Kat bar as a three-dimensional registered trade mark. Cadbury opposed the application. On 20 June 2013, a decision by the UKIPO refused Nestlé’s trade mark application in class 30 for chocolate and various chocolate confectionery products but allowed the application in relation to cakes and pastries. Justice Arnold largely agreed with the hearing officer’s reasoning that the three-dimensional shape should not be registered because it lacked distinctiveness and had not acquired distinctiveness, and that the shape was necessary to achieve a technical result. However, he referred some interesting questions to the CJEU that could result in a significant change in the way in which we approach shape marks. (more…)
The EPO’s Draft Rules relating to Unitary Patent Protection
IPcopy commentator Antonio Pizzoli has pointed us in the direction of the EPO’s draft rules relating to the Unitary Patent Regulation which you can find here (thanks Antonio!). IPcopy hadn’t come across this document before, and it makes for an interesting, if slightly worrying, read.
Clearly it is a work in progress, and the draft is peppered with interesting comments and alternative proposals.
Subscribe to RSS feed
IPcopy 