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Intellectual Property UK
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March 07, 2024
Siemens Wins Anti-Lightning Wind Turbine IP Feud At EPO
A Siemens unit can keep its patent over a wind turbine lightning protection system after proving that the design uses an inventive self-threading screw system to help manage electrical currents, a European appeals panel has ruled.
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March 06, 2024
Rihanna's Insta Posts Thwart Puma's Bid To Protect Shoe IP
A European court ruled Wednesday that Puma missed its window to seek intellectual property protection for a shoe design after Rihanna disclosed the model to the public more than a year and a half earlier in her Instagram posts.
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March 06, 2024
Global Retailers Should Audit After Amazon TM Ruling In UK
After the U.K. Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that Amazon.com Inc. infringed U.K. trademarks when it marketed knockoff goods on its U.S. storefront to British customers, lawyers warned that other e-commerce players should also review their international retail strategy.
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March 06, 2024
Alaska Airlines Fights To Ground Virgin's $160M Royalties Win
Alaska Airlines Inc. urged an English appeals court on Wednesday to overturn a decision letting Virgin collect $160 million in royalties, arguing it shouldn't have to pay because it had stopped using the Virgin branding.
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March 06, 2024
Veuve Clicquot Loses Fight With Lidl Over Orange Square TM
A European court on Wednesday blocked the Veuve Clicquot champagne brand from getting a trademark for a shade of orange, concluding that the LVMH unit hadn't proved the public associated the color with the brand throughout the whole bloc.
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March 06, 2024
Seoul Semiconductor Sues Amazon In Unified Patent Court
Seoul Semiconductor Co. Ltd. has accused Amazon of infringing two of its LED lighting patents in Europe's newly-created Unified Patent Court, underscoring its hopes to use the court to attack several infringers at once.
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March 06, 2024
Amazon Liable For Knockoffs On US Site That Infringe UK TMs
Amazon can be held accountable for infringing European or U.K. trademarks by marketing knockoff items listed on its U.S. marketplace to local customers, Britain's top court concluded Wednesday, a landmark decision that makes it easier for brands to enforce intellectual property on global e-commerce platforms.
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March 05, 2024
Gibson Dunn AI Leader On Weathering The AI Policy Blizzard
Like a mountaineer leading a team through a snowstorm, Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP's artificial intelligence co-chair Cassandra L. Gaedt-Sheckter is guiding companies developing and using artificial intelligence through a blizzard of new laws and regulations coming online in Europe and the U.S., saying that assessing AI risks is the North Star to mitigating them.
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March 05, 2024
4 Ways For Employers To Protect Trade Secrets
Businesses that want to prevent employees from disclosing trade secrets — maliciously or otherwise — must shield the information while also ensuring at the same time that staff understand the consequences of revealing confidential material. Here experts offer four key strategies to keep that sensitive information under wraps.
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March 05, 2024
LG's Lawn Mower Patent Takes Root On 3rd Appeal
European officials have ruled that LG Electronics can finally patent a robotic lawn mower after the company trimmed its original application three times, ruling that it was cutting new turf in the field.
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March 05, 2024
Repsol Beats Lufthansa Unit In R+, AirPlus EU TM Clash
Repsol has fought off a Lufthansa unit's bid to block its "R+" trademark after convincing a European appeals board that consumers would not confuse the sign with the German carrier's "AirPlus" set of logos.
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March 05, 2024
French State-Owned Railway SNCF Settles TM Dispute
France's state-owned railway operator has settled its trademark spat with a Polish public transport research and development firm, after the Polish company agreed to drop its proposed branding for a range of transport-related products and services.
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March 05, 2024
Spanish Pharma Unit Blights Blood Donation Firm's TM Bid
A subsidiary of Grifols SA has left a blood donation company's "Amber Plasma" trademark hopes in tatters, persuading a European appeals panel to begin the process of blocking the "banal" sign for a lack of distinguishing features.
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March 04, 2024
Security Biz Can't Get Rival's Printing Patent Nixed At EPO
A security company has lost its latest bid to overturn a competitor's plastic card printing patent, with an appeals panel saying Monday that the tech did not lack an inventive step over earlier designs.
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March 04, 2024
Mitsubishi's Image-Smoothing Patent Lacks Clarity, EPO Says
A Mitsubishi unit has lost its latest shot at registering a European patent over its image-smoothing technology, with an appeals panel ruling that the company's explanation of its pixel filtering process was not clear enough.
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March 04, 2024
Ocado's Appeal Prompts Questions On UPC Public Access
The Unified Patent Court is set to decide later in March whether the public should be granted access to court documents in one of its first landmark trials that could decide the future of the burgeoning court's approach to open justice.
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March 04, 2024
Food Company Gets Patent For Chocolate-Like Food Product
A Japanese food manufacturer can patent its chocolate-like product, after European officials ruled that its heat-resistant properties were not a focus of earlier inventions, making the ingredient mixture new enough to merit protection.
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March 04, 2024
Reckitt Gets Patent For New Dyed Detergent On Appeal
Reckitt Benckiser can patent a new automatic dishwashing product after European officials ruled that earlier inventors could only have made it by "using hindsight," despite opposition from a major rival.
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March 01, 2024
AI Art Tool Doesn't Infringe Getty IP, Stability Says
The British company tied to popular artificial intelligence art platform Stable Diffusion has denied claims that it developed or used the software in any way that infringes Getty Images' intellectual property, marking a new chapter in the premier U.K. copyright claim over generative AI.
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March 01, 2024
TikTok Can't Shut Down Rival App TM Despite Identical Biz
TikTok failed to stop the maker of the recently shuttered Tiki app from registering a trademark over its name, after U.K. intellectual property officials ruled that consumers wouldn't mix them up despite covering "self-evidently identical" goods.
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March 01, 2024
Wright Blames Enemies For Forged Email In Satoshi Trial
Craig Wright hit back on Friday at accusations that he forged an email amid a trial over his claims that he is the inventor of bitcoin, telling a London court that an enemy could have doctored the message to sabotage his case.
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March 01, 2024
5 Questions For Mishcon De Reya's Campbell Forsyth
When the British army mobilized Campbell Forsyth full-time shortly after 9/11, his comrades could hardly have predicted that he would become a deputy High Court judge less than two decades later. Here, he gives Law360 a window into his life as a judge and reflects on his journey into patent litigation.
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March 01, 2024
UK Litigation Roundup: Here's What You Missed In London
This past week in London has seen a legal battle between confectionary heavyweight Mars Wrigley UK and a frozen food manufacturer, a trademark infringement claim by Abbott Diabetes Care over glucose monitoring meters, Mercedes-Benz Group hit with two commercial fraud disputes, and the Mediterranean Shipping Company tackle a cargo claim by an insurance company. Here, Law360 looks at these and other new claims in the U.K.
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March 01, 2024
Printing Biz Revives Image Tech Patent Hopes At EPO
A tech company has won another shot at getting a European patent for its image printing method, persuading an appeals panel that officials should not have blocked the application for a lack of clarity on insignificant aspects of the design.
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February 29, 2024
Bioscience Biz Can't Restore Catheter Needle Patent At EPO
A bioscience company can't revive its European patent over a catheter needle safety device because the design's only new aspect — the plastic material it's made from — isn't inventive, an appeals panel said Thursday.
Expert Analysis
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Dairy Vs. Plant-Based 'Milks': A Regulatory Standoff
Sales of nondairy milk alternatives are flourishing, but the dairy industry charges the U.S. Food and Drug Administration with failing to enforce its own labeling regulations regarding the definition of "milk." The longer terms like soy milk, almond milk and coconut milk remain in use, the stronger the argument for their continued use to describe these products, say attorneys with Shook Hardy & Bacon LLP.
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UK Supreme Court Broadens Scope Of Patent Protection
The U.K. Supreme Court’s recent judgment in Actavis v. Eli Lilly sets out a revised approach to assessing patents in the U.K. and is likely to confer greater protection on patent owners, by providing that the protection afforded to a patent is not limited to the wording of the claims, say attorneys with Dechert LLP.
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Brexit Creates Uncertainty For IP
Following Brexit, if the EU regulations directly applicable to intellectual property law are not transposed into English or Scottish law, a regulatory vacuum could be created. For patents, this could mean the first lack of substantive legal protection in over 700 years, says Roberta Young of Loza & Loza LLP.
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Guest Feature
An Interview With Floyd Abrams
It was a privilege to spend a half-hour on the phone with the nation's foremost First Amendment lawyer. Floyd Abrams and I discussed his career, his new book and what he sees in his free-speech crystal ball. And he was a very good sport when I asked if it is constitutionally protected to yell inside a movie theater: “Citizens United is a terrible decision and should be set on fire,” says Randy Maniloff of White and Williams LLP.
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An Interview With Ex-USPTO Director Todd Dickinson: Part 2
During a recent conversation with us, Q. Todd Dickinson, former director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, offered his thoughts on intellectual property legislative and judicial activity in recent years, the policies that could use improvement, and the challenges that lie ahead for patent holders, say David Haas and Scott Weingust of Stout Risius Ross LLC.
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An Interview With Ex-USPTO Director Todd Dickinson: Part 1
David Haas and Scott Weingust of Stout Risius Ross LLC recently had a candid discussion with Q. Todd Dickinson, former director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and current head of Polsinelli PC’s intellectual property public policy practice. He shared his thoughts on the evolution of IP policy since his time at the PTO and his current concerns about U.S. patent law.
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How China Became An IP Superpower
China has repeatedly been labeled an intellectual property pirate and wholesale IP rights violator, but those labels are no longer accurate. Today, applicants who overlook China do so at their peril, says Jay Erstling, of counsel at Patterson Thuente Pedersen PA and former director of WIPO's Patent Cooperation Treaty Office.
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Real-World IP Tools In Virtual Worlds
Nonmillennials usually approach things like virtual reality from the perspective of what we know as the “real” world. We compare objects and interactions with how they would be if generated by Mother Nature. This is the greatest challenge for intellectual property professionals working in a virtual environment, say Elizabeth Ferrill of Finnegan Henderson Farabow Garrett & Dunner LLP and Joacim Lydén of Awapatent.
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Filing Foreign Patents: 3rd-Party Disclosure Considerations
For U.S. patent applications filed following a disclosure of the invention, the one-year grace period provides a useful safety net. However, in other territories much stricter rules apply, say Hannah Buckley and Stuart Lumsden of Marks & Clerk.
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EU May Soon Surpass US As Patent Center
Despite some uncertainty surrounding Brexit’s impact, the changing patent regime in Europe likely will make things easier for patent holders. Indeed, the new Unified Patent Court has several features that suggest it will be an appealing alternative to U.S. patent courts, say Ashley Keller and Katharine Wolanyk of Burford Capital LLC.
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What To Expect From NPE Activity In China
An affiliate of nonpracticing entity Wi-LAN recently filed a patent suit against Sony in Nanjing, China. NPE activities have rarely been seen in China, so this raises the concern that international NPEs are now stepping in. Chinese patent litigation practice has two factors favorable to NPEs and two factors not favorable to NPEs, says Jackie Wong, legal counsel at Xiaomi Inc.
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US Patent Practice Drifting Toward Approach Prevalent Abroad
Post-Alice cases on technical problems and technical solutions show that a problem-solution standard similar to the one adopted in Europe, Australia, China and Japan is seeing express endorsement by U.S. courts adjudicating Section 101 challenges, say Gurneet Singh and Harold Laidlaw of Mintz Levin Cohn Ferris Glovsky and Popeo PC.
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Tips For Addressing The IP Challenges Of 3-D Printing: Part 1
The intellectual property rights of both manufacturers that use 3-D printing and manufacturers that don't may suffer through claim drafting that does not take into account the opportunities provided by 3-D manufacturing, say attorneys with Marks & Clerk.
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EU Unified Patent Court Will Proceed In 2017 — Now What?
Although it is sensible to be cautious and plan accordingly, we believe that the European Union's Unified Patent Court will, after a possibly extended teething period, become a significant forum in which patents are litigated, say Trevor Cook and Anthony Trenton, leaders of WilmerHale's IP litigation practice in Europe.
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Comparing Patent Quality At The USPTO And EPO
In this latest article in an ongoing series on patent quality, Professor Colleen Chien of Santa Clara University School of Law and Professor Jay Kesan of University of Illinois College of Law provide a snapshot of comparative patent inputs, processes and outcomes at the European Patent Office and U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.