Search results for

North America Awards 2014

A mark can be registered as long as it meets the requirement of "distinctive capacity". This concept has two components: (1) the intrinsic identifying capacity, which refers to the identifying ability of the sign considered in itself, independent of all others (principle of originality); and (2) the extrinsic identifying capacity, understood as the suitability of a sign to be registered for being different from others already existing (principle of novelty).

The Indonesian government through the Indonesian Patent Office is sending letters to at least 7,600 Indonesian patent owners in order to claim unpaid annual fees along with additional interest as soon as possible. More than half of the said unpaid patents are owned by foreign entities.

Every once in a while the question whether there is copyright on patent documents surfaces. For the Netherlands this question has now been answered. In a monograph, published at the request of the Dutch Association of Patent Attorneys, Professor Quaedvlieg (University of Nijmegen) has delved extensively into this subject.

Based on EU trade mark law, a trade mark registration can be revoked if it has become a common indication as a result of acts or omissions by the trade mark owner. In a recent ruling of the Court of First Instance of the EU Court of Justice, an interesting position was taken regarding trade marks that have become common names. The court ruled that the perception of the end users is the only relevant criterion. Additionally, "omission" is also understood as the omission by the trade mark owner to encourage sellers to make more use of the mark in marketing the respective products.

In a case regarding parallel imports of spare parts for motorcycles/vehicles, the Athens Single Member Court of First Instance, by its recent judgment number 6570/2013, affirmed the principle of Community exhaustion of trade mark rights by making extensive reference to the CJEU's settled case law C-78/70 Deutsche Grammophn, C-16/74 Centrafarm BV v Winthorp BV, landmark case C-355/96 Silhouette and recent C-449/09 Kabushiki Kaisha v IPN Bulgaria.

If an allegedly patent infringing product does not literally use a certain feature of a patent claim, but uses a surrogate means, according to German Patent Law, the product can still be sued for infringement under the doctrine of equivalence.

In a manufacturer-distributor relationship, does the distributor have trade mark rights? The question was answered by the Court of Appeal in La Pointique International Ltd v Soo Juan Choon & Co, Civil Appeal W-02-3706-10.

On March 15 1989, the Department of Health (DOH) issued Administrative Order Number 67 series of 1989 entitled Revised Rules and Regulations on Registration of Pharmaceutical Products. This required drug manufacturers to register certain drug and medicine products with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) before release to the public, and to submit satisfactory bioavailability/bioequivalence (BA/BE) test results to secure a certificate of product registration (CPR). This requirement, however, was put on hold because there was no local facility capable of conducting the test. In 1997, the FDA issued Circulars Numbers 1 and 8 resuming the implementation of the requirement for the BA/BE testing.

"AMICO" Cjsc filed a trade mark application for a figurative designation comprising two wide intersecting lines of a red colour for goods in class 10, and services in classes 35, 37,42 and 44. Inside each line there were intersecting ovals of white colour shaped as stylised satellites orbits. The protection was sought in red and white.