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Intellectual property moves include McDermott Will & Emery’s head of trade secrets moving to DLA Piper, administrative patent judge Lora Green joining Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati and hires by Latham & Watkins, Ropes & Gray and more

In-house counsel from L'Oréal, Avon, and Louis Vuitton recently shared what they look for from their outside counsel, as well as habits to avoid

Counsel causing too large a delay before oral hearing is scheduled, the number of issues raised on appeal, and what makes a good appellate lawyer were some of the subjects on Judge Kara Stoll’s mind at the AIPLA meeting

Peter was deputy general counsel of A10 Networks in Silicon Valley. Her background suggests she is "on the same wavelength" as the USPTO director, suggests one observer

After the Supreme Court decision in B&B Hardware, Julia Anne Matheson and Cathy Liu of Hogan Lovells examine a case considering whether a court decision can have preclusive effect on a TTAB proceeding

The ruling that Qualcomm must license SEPs to competitors on FRAND terms helps the FTC but will also have a wider impact – upending the licensing practices of SEP owners, who have criticised the decision

European patent EP 1 313 508 B1 claims the use of pemetrexed disodium in the manufacture of a medicament for use in a combination therapy together with vitamin B12 for inhibiting tumour growth. In the last six years, several courts throughout Europe have dealt with the question of whether medicaments containing a different salt or the free acid of pemetrexed infringe this patent by equivalent means. Most of the lower courts denied an infringement. However, the supreme courts went in a different direction: the UK Supreme Court (case no. [2017] UKSC 48, judgment of July 12 2017) and the Swiss Federal Supreme Court (case no. 4A_208/2017, judgment of October 20 2017) found infringement under the doctrine of equivalence. The decision of the German Federal Supreme Court (case no. X ZR 29/15, judgment of June 14 2016) was only concerned with one aspect of the doctrine. However, in light of this decision, the German Higher Regional Court of Munich confirmed infringement by equivalent means in its judgment of May 18 2017 (case no. 6 U 3039/16).

Nigeria uses the International Classification of Goods and Services for its trade mark registration system. However, there was a time when it used the old British Classification system, a system that consisted of 50 classes (all for goods). Although the Nigerian Trade Marks Act 1990 does make provision for the reclassification of old registrations, there are still many trade marks on the register that were classified under the old system. So is there any disadvantage to having a registration that was classified under the old classification system?

Despite the seemingly unlimited choice of words and the vast imagination of people, collision between similar words, real or coined, is not infrequent. In normal life these words are homonyms or homophones and do not pose any problems in everyday activities. It is a different story in the world of intellectual property. Same or similar words may mean different things but in the eyes of the consumer they are the same and for businesses they may mean loss.

Dmitry Andreev discusses issues in patenting blockchain-related technologies, and explains how to avoid the most common grounds of rejection