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In early 2019, IP Australia initiated a comprehensive research phase exploring Australia’s design ecosystem, including voices from the industry, design forums, economic analysis and business surveys. Following this 12-month exercise, the regulator has proposed the following changes:

Recently, the Korean Patent Court rendered a favourable decision on the patentability of medical use inventions in which strict scrutiny was employed for two aspects of the enablement and inventiveness requirements.

Kwan Loh and Jamie-Lynn Kraft of Smart & Biggar review the changes made to Canadian trademark law and offer tips on how to navigate the road ahead

In the present case, the German Federal Court of Justice again had to deal with the question of how a representation of information within the meaning of Article 52(2)(d) EPC is to be distinguished from a technical feature.

The Enlarged Board of Appeal of the EPO (EBA) has recently issued opinion G 3/19, which concludes that plants and animals exclusively obtained by “essentially biological processes” are exempt from patentability. This finding only affects patents derived from patent applications filed after July 1 2017.

In an important development, Mozambique has joined the African Regional Intellectual Property Organisation’s (ARIPO) registration system for trademarks. It has been a member of the system for patents for some time.