Search results for

It is natural to expect that when a company files a patent application it wants to obtain a patent, maintain it and obtain some profit from it. Sometimes the natural course of things is disrupted.

Even James Bond can boast about having ridden on one. Hispano – Suiza was one of the world references of luxury and competition cars at the beginning of the 20th century and was affected by the Spanish Civil War – not being able to relaunch in the market despite its fame.

It is a common assumption that when the respondent in an opposition case is declared in default for failure to file his answer, and the hearing officer decides on the basis of the evidence submitted by the opposer, the respondent loses and his trade mark application is rejected. That was not the case in Smith & Nephew Inc v Livingstone Healthcare Corp docketed as IPC No 14-2014-00176 decided by the Bureau of Legal Affairs (BLA) of the Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines (IPOPHL) on February 1 2017. The contested application was for the mark Adler covering surgical instruments, filed by Livingstone in 2013.

In Germany, products that are directly obtained by a patent-protected process are entitled to patent protection according to Section 9, Sentence 2 (3) PatG, even if a claim directed to the product is lacking in the patent. To obtain extended protection, according to German practice, it is a necessary condition that the product as such would at least be accessible to patent protection.

The patentability of biotechnological inventions in Europe is governed by the EU Directive on the protection of biotechnological inventions (98/44/EG, the Biotech Directive). The Directive is implemented in the national patent laws, but has also been used to amend the European Patent Convention.

It has been approximately a decade since the Mexican Institute of Industrial Property (IMPI) adopted very strict criteria when assessing the likelihood of confusion between trade marks. As a result of this strict approach IMPI's trade mark examiners had some criteria that were troublesome, especially when marks including designs or associated to a concept were compared to each other.

In a recent decision, the Trademarks Administrative Commission ruled on a case regarding the infringement of a famous trade mark. In particular the applicant filed an application for the trademark Coco & Silk and device, covering goods in classes 14, 18 and 25. The opposing party, Chanel SARL, filed an opposition against the acceptance of this trade mark claiming infringement of its famous trade mark Coco covering goods in classes 14, 18 and 25. The applicant, in defence, claimed that the distinctiveness of its trade mark lies on the combination of the two words, Coco and Silk, as well as on the device contained in the opposed trade mark. To support its argument, it provided evidence that the word Coco forms part of several composite national trade marks belonging to third parties, covering similar goods in classes 14, 18 and 25, all of which co-exist. As claimed by the applicant, the existence of these trademarks proves that the word Coco is of weak distinctiveness.

Restoration of the omission to pay an annuity fee for the Dutch part of a European patent is only allowable under Article 23 of the Dutch Patent Act if the patent proprietor (and his representative) exercised all due care. This was recently decided in a case between Flawa and the Dutch Patent Office (DPO) before the court in The Hague.

As Myanmar has opened up in the past five years, multinationals have rushed into the country. But, reports Shaun Tan, its IP laws are still frozen in time

On March 2 2017, the State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) of China announced its decision to amend the Patent Examination Guidelines, effective as of April 1 2017. The new Guidelines provide significant changes to software patents, data supplementation for pharmaceutical patents and claim amendments in the invalidation procedures.