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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).

Recently, in Cronk v Commissioner of Patents [2014] FCA 37, a Federal Court appeal from the decision of the Patent Office to reject an application on the basis of obviousness, the Patent Office has taken the extraordinary step of engaging experts to attempt to establish to the court the obviousness of the invention.

On March 28 2014 the government of Canada proposed significant changes to Canada's Trade-marks Act. This note highlights the most significant proposed changes.

The trade mark system in Mexico faces several problems because there are numerous trade mark registrations in the Registry that were granted to identify a lot of products and/or services within one class. In commercial practice these trade marks are not used to identify each and every product and/or service protected, but only to identify one or some of them.

The EPC recognises three main grounds for opposition (Article 100 EPC): (1) that the invention is not patentable (for example, not novel or inventive); (2) that the invention is not sufficiently disclosed; and (3) that subject-matter has been added.

All countries of the Gulf are civil law countries with the code typically exhaustively covering the complete system of the law. This being said, the first-to-file concept is given considerable weight. Despite the fact that some GCC countries may offer a limited amount of common law rights, enforcement is relative and solely determined by the practitioner handling the case.

The Portuguese PTMO has published on its website a notice concerning a change in the proceedings related to the transfer of ownership of supplementary protection certificates (SPCs).

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.

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.

Ruth Burstall and Iona Silverman review two design cases that cast some light on issues such as the scope of protection and the overall impression on the informed user, but argue that many questions remain unanswered