Search results for

The intersection between copyright in a pattern and design rights on the same has come for determination before the courts on many occasions. A recent Delhi High Court judgment has clarified the position, on an appeal filed by Microfibres against the order of the single judge. The single judge held that if the design is registered under the Designs Act, it would lose its copyright protection under the Copyright Act. When a design is registrable under the Designs Act but has not so been registered, it would continue to enjoy copyright protection under the Copyright Act so long as the threshold limit of its application on an article by an industrial process for more than 50 times is reached. But once that limit is crossed, it would lose its copyright protection under the Copyright Act.

The Indonesian Commercial Court has raised the hopes of trade mark owners facing the grim and costly task of tackling trade mark infringers in Indonesia.

The provisions of Directive 2004/48/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of April 29 2004 on the enforcement of IP rights were implemented in the Greek national law by law 3524/26.01.2007. This implementation was partial since only the relevant passages of the copyright law (law 2121/93) were specifically amended.

On June 22 2009, the Supreme People's Court of China made an announcement aimed at consolidating the jurisdiction of certain types of first instance IP appeal cases to the IP Tribunal of the Beijing no 1 Intermediate People's Court. This new decision came into effect on July 1 2009.

The Federal Court recently issued a decision in which the plaintiff in an infringement action had filed a disclaimer shortly before litigation. A disclaimer is a means by which a patentee states that he or she no longer wishes to claim a right over part or all of a claim because the claim as allowed is too broad by reason of mistake, accident, or inadvertence on the part of the patentee.

Like many other countries, Belgium has adopted some interesting measures for cutting taxes on patent income for corporations in order to promote innovation.

In 2002, Australia introduced a grace period provision which was modelled on the US style grace period to provide a 12 month prior publication or use right by the patentee before filing a complete patent application.

In a recent judgment the Austrian Supreme Court had to decide a case on knives that were protected as registered Community designs. These knives were sold in sets consisting of 11 knives, where the knives were packed in two layers of five and six such that when the cover of the package was taken away all of the handles of the knives could be seen. The infringement of the registered Community design was a clear-cut case and was not even appealed to the Supreme Court by the defendant.

A trade mark consists of any distinctive mark, symbol, or device affixed by a manufacturer to the goods he produces, or used in connection with the services rendered with the purpose of identifying such goods or services in the market.

Two years ago the USPTO, academics and some of the biggest companies in the US embraced the peer-to-patent project as a way of tackling mounting patent backlogs. In June the pilot scheme was suspended. So what happens next? Eileen McDermott investigates