General IP News

On December 7, the chief of the Antitrust Division at the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), Makan Delrahim, announced that the DOJ will be withdrawing from the 2013 USPTO and DOJ joint statement, “Policy Statement on Remedies for Standards-Essential Patents Subject to Voluntary F/RAND Commitments.”  The announcement was part of ... Read More

TrueNorth Companies, L.C. v. Trunorth Warranty Plans, LLC, No. C17-31-LTS, --- F.Supp.3d ----, 2018 WL 6438370 (N.D. Iowa Dec. 7, 2018)TrueNorth sued TN Warranty for trademark infringement and related claims based on the parties’ respective design logos:  plaintiff's logodefendant's logoTrueNorth provides financial and insurance services, including products and services to commercial ... Read More

Anglin v. Edgewell Personal Care Co., 2018 WL 6434424, No. 4:18-CV-00639-NCC (E.D. Mo. Dec. 7, 2018)Are there people who believe that Twiqbal improved consistency?  Because I do not understand the level of detail required. Here, the magistrate holds that pleading that one’s testing complied with FDA regulations is not sufficient ... Read More

IPKat is here with your latest round up of the IP blogs! Highlights this week include Afro-IP's take on the Hakuna Matata trade mark debate, commentary on the political dimensions of the recent decision by the EPO boards of appeal on plant products produced by essentially biological processes, and a debate ... Read More

The AmeriKat, unfortunately, has yet to attend an EPLAW Congress, coming, as they often do, during an intensely busy court term.  But for those who manage to escape to attend the annual congress in Brussels are treated to an engaging debate on the latest issues and developments in European patent ... Read More

Meet and greet the 206th edition of Never Too Late!CopyrightDefinitely no copyright in tasteDo you smell copyright protection? You must be wrong, because in BREAKING: CJEU says NO to copyright in the taste of a cheese  and in The Levola Hengelo CJEU decision: ambiguities, uncertainties ... and more questions, Kat Eleonora reports on ... Read More

The latest Laddie, Prescott and Vitoria is available to buy in time for Christmas. Best left under the tree as it will weigh down any stockings! Spread over two bumper volumes this deep dive into copyright law is essential reading for the serious copyright practitioner.At first glance, the authors list ... Read More

Right of information from alleged infringers ...Article 8(1) of the Enforcement Directive mandates upon Member States to ensure that, in the context of proceedings concerning an infringement of an IP right and in response to a justified and proportionate request of the claimant, the competent judicial authorities may order that ... Read More

One of the most challenging issues that confronts trademark practitioners is how to treat a word that is arguably the dominant portion of a mark. This is especially so when that word is the subject of a registration by another party. The most recent decision involving the "Monster" mark in ... Read More

The mark (AKA Pantone 2685C)Cadbury UK Ltd v The Comptroller General of Patents Designs And Trade Marks [2018] EWCA Civ 2715.This appeal concerned Cadbury's attempt to amend the description of the mark:The mark consists of the colour purple, as shown on the form of application, applied to the whole visible ... Read More

No caption necessaryThis is the third and final post in the series on the Second Brand Protection Conference in Frankfurt. This post is all about Mette Andersen's insights into the LEGO Group. For me, this was one of the most fascinating and informative talks. Whilst it was focused on the LEGO brand protection experience, ... Read More

Access blocked ... or not?Fifteen months after the law introducing the Greek “Commission for the notification of online copyright and related rights infringement”was passed and eight months after the start of its operations, the Commission has finally issued its first blocking orders. Katfriend Yannos Paramythiotis(Paramythiotis & Partners Law Firm) explains what ... Read More

This is the second in a series of blogs following the Second Brand Protection Conference in Frankfurt. The first is available here.The first blog looked at some of the issues faced by major brands. This blog looks at some of the solutions. The law enforcement perspectiveDavid Hunt from Camden Trading Standards ... Read More

The first Counterfeit and Piracy Watch List has been published by the European Commission (EC) today. It identifies marketplaces, registrars and hosting providers located outside the EU which are engaged in facilitating substantial counterfeiting and piracy. Background On 22 January 2018, the EC launched the public consultation with the aim to establish ... Read More

Brand protection is much harder in the digital age - small packages are a big part of the problemI have recently returned from the Second Brand Protection Congress in Frankfurt.It was a very interesting event with a wide range of speakers and topics all linked to brand protection. The talks ... Read More

“There is nothing new under the sun”. In copyright law, this declaration from the Book of Ecclesiastes translates into an awkward tension between the need to limit slavish copying (to prevent free-riding), on the one hand, and the need to allow a degree of derivative creation, on the other (to avoid ... Read More

Swedish Collective Management Organisation (STIM) and the Swedish Artists’ and Musicians’ Interest Organisation (SAMI) brought two separate proceedings against two companies that operate in the automobile leasing/renting industry. Both cases followed missed payment (since 2014) of yearly licensing fees to STIM and SAMI, and they are currently pending before the ... Read More

Hi-Tech Pharmaceuticals, Inc. v. HBS Int’l Corp., --- F.3d ----, 2018 WL 6314282 , No. 17-13884 (11th Cir. Dec. 4, 2018)Hi-Tech sued HBS, alleging that the label of its protein-powder supplement HexaPro misled customers about the quantity and quality of protein in each serving, in violation of the Georgia Uniform ... Read More

IPKat has received breaking news that the Technical Board of Appeal (TBA) yesterday decided that recently amended Rule 28(2) EPC is in conflict with Art. 53(b) EPC as interpreted by the Enlarged Board of Appeal in G 2/12 (Broccoli/Tomato II). Further, according to the Art. 164(2) EPC the Articles prevail, thus rending ... Read More

With the first self-driving vehicles (SDVs) likely to be commercially available by 2025, it seems that the transport revolution is nearly upon us.  Among the major players in this new emerging market, we have the established automotive firms investing in digital technologies, with an upcoming group of patent holders  specializing ... Read More

According to the official central Chinese government website, on December 5, 2018, Premier Li Keqiang chaired a State Council meeting which cleared the long awaited proposed draft of the patent law amendments.  The description of the draft is set forth below: 为进一步加强专利权人合法权益保护、完善激励发明创造的机制制度、把实践中有效保护专利的成熟做法上升为法律，会议通过《中华人民共和国专利法修正案（草案）》。草案着眼加大对侵犯知识产权的打击力度，借鉴国际做法，大幅提高故意侵犯、假冒专利的赔偿和罚款额，显著增加侵权成本，震慑违法行为；明确了侵权人配合提供相关资料的举证责任，提出网络服务提供者未及时阻止侵权行为须承担连带责任。草案还明确了发明人或设计人合理分享职务发明创造收益的激励机制，并完善了专利授权制度。会议决定将草案提请全国人大常委会审议。 A rough translation is as follows: In order ... Read More

Pinocchio, arguably one of the first cases of AI,and his Kat Figaro Artificial Intelligence and copyright: best friends, enemies, or ... frenemies?Find out by attending this new joint IPKat/BLACAevent, which will take place at London’s ReedSmith offices in the evening of Thursday, 10 January 2019.The event, which will be led by ... Read More

Recently, there has been an uproar in Kenya initiated by this article about Disney's trademark for the phrase "Hakuna Matata". A reasoned response (here) clarified that the TM is valid only in the U.S., so no rights in East Africa are involved, and further argued that this is normal business ... Read More

Kat licknkingCan linking to protected content be considered an infringement of IP rights, at certain conditions? As far as copyright is concerned, this is a question that - further to the decisions of the Court of Justice of the European (CJEU) in cases like Svensson [Katposts here] and GS Media [Katposts ... Read More

Revenge porn is sometimes mentioned in textbooks and commentary as the typical case of private production gone wrong, for which IP rights would prove useful not so much for incentivising the commercial dissemination of the ‘work’ but, rather, for its taking down. Such a scenario would certainly make for an ... Read More

The LA Times recently published an article titled, “Microsoft will Give the U.S. Military Access to ‘All the Technology We Create'.”  The article discusses Microsoft’s recent announcement as well as the tension in some U.S. technology companies concerning working with the U.S. military.  For example, some Google employees have expressed ... Read More

From Brazil, we would like to report the application for a Geographical Indication (GI) for a handicraft. A GI is set to differentiate products due to their geographical origin; it could be environmental conditions i.e. natural conditions and or cultural conditions, which are present on a region that gives the ... Read More

A few days ago news spread that well-known musical genre reggae, which originated in the beautiful island of Jamaica, would be protected by the UN. Katfriend Natalie Corthésy (The University of the West Indies at Mona) explains what happened in detail and reflects on the implications thereof.Here’s what Natalie writes:“BIG ... Read More

IPKat has been busy web-crawling over the past week and is delighted to bring its readers a roundup of the most exciting IP posts. PatentsNorthwestern University, Pritzker Law School, has released three databases on technology standards and standard-setting organisations. The databases are available free of charge for all academic researchers. ... Read More

Kat gapAs the debate around the draft Directive on copyright in the Digital Single Market continues to unfold [Katposts here], The IPKat is happy to publish the following contribution by Ansgar Ohly and Matthias Leistner (both LMU München) concerning their proposal – which will be hosted in full on the Journal of Intellectual Property ... Read More