Latest blog articles
-
Geographical indications (hereinafter GIs) are signs used to safeguard the existence of a link between a product and its place of origin, focusing on quality and tradition.
-
For more than 40 years now, the harmonisation and unification of the European patent law have been discussed. So far, the only European legal instrument regulating substantive patent matters is a European Patent Convention (EPC) signed in 1973. The EPC, however, is outside the EU’s legislative and...
-
Constructing a functioning single market for business and trade among the Member States of the European Union (EU) has been the cornerstone of the EU project, and remains one of the strongest drivers for EU-level legislative reform. Over the years, the EU has prioritized the harmonization of...
-
The implementation of the Unitary Patent Package will represent the result of the evolution towards the unification of the European patent system.
-
Plant varieties are difficult to make but easy to reproduce. Proving that someone reproduced a plant variety, however, is extremely hard. For organized crime, infringing plant variety rights therefore presents low-hanging fruit, with consequences far beyond the infringement of IP rights.
-
The topic of AI-generated inventions requires preliminary clarifications: what do we mean with AI? What is the meaning of AI-generated inventions?
-
An EUIPO Board of Appeal agreed with Facebook that the figurative mark MYHUNTBOOK would take unfair advantage of Facebook’s reputation. This was, primarily, due to the inclusion of “book” in the mark. Is such protection not too far-reaching?
-
Nobuki Yamamoto, a Japanese contemporary artist, made an eye-catching work of ‘goldfish swimming in a phone booth’ (‘Work 1’) by December 2000 at the latest. In October 2011, a student organisation called ‘Goldfish Club’ at Kyoto University of Art and Design produced Work 2 and exhibited it for a...
-
Current US and EU secondary liability standards do not address all factors to trigger liability. This influences legislation and case law, setting an uncertain secondary liability outcome of IP infringement cases against Internet Intermediaries’. I suggest that tort law can tackle this problem.
-
Can a single colour alone be a trademark? The question is neither new nor unexplored. However, old wine in a new bottle is presented by the General Court in its decision rejecting an attempt to register a shade of colour for inhalers for asthma and related pharmaceutical preparations, reinstating...