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Patent owners have found it tough to meet the requirements for motions to amend claims in PTAB post issuance review proceedings. Binal J Patel, J Pieter van Es and Kimberly S Devine examine the eight decisions where such motions have been granted

The Federal Circuit has concluded “the patent at issue is outside the definition of a CBM patent that Congress provided by statute” in its Secure Axcess v PNC Bank National Association ruling. Judge Lourie wrote a dissent, backing up the PTAB’s determination

The Supreme Court has reversed the Federal Circuit in Life Tech v Promega, ruling that manufacture and exportation of a single component of a patented invention assembled in another country is not enough for infringement in the US. However, as a concurring opinion and observers note, the court did not indicate how much more than one is enough

Genentech filing a biosimilars complaint against Amgen, SiriusXM being granted summary judgment in a pre-1972 copyright case in New York, filing in the Eastern District of Texas slumping, Donald Trump being approved for a trade mark for his name in China, and BlackBerry suing Nokia for patent infringement were in the recent intellectual property news

Generally, when faced with competitor's illegal copying of a product's package, unless the design of such package is a registered design patent or a trade mark, the claimant used to rely on Article 22 of Taiwan's Fair Trade Act to seek injunctive relief. However, under the Fair Trade Act, there will be a heavy burden on the claimant to show to the judge that the asserted package is a "famous representation" that is "commonly known to the general public". Thus, if the design of a product package is eligible for copyright protection, it would be another powerful tool to combat copycats and free riders.

On December 26 2016, the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC) issued the first draft of China's first Ecommerce Law, with an invitation for public comment within 30 days.

In Opke Ireland Global Holdings Ltd v European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) the General Court (case T-88/16) upheld the Board of Appeal´s decision (case R 2387/2014-5) finding likelihood of confusion between pharmaceutical marks in class 5 according to Article 8 (1) (b) European Union Trade Mark Regulation 207/2009 (EUTMR), namely between the attacked EU mark application, word Alpharen, and the older national Lithuanian and Latvian trade marks, word Alpha D 3. In doing so, the Court had the opportunity to also deal with some procedural regulation rules not which are not commonly adjudicated on.

In a first for Australia, our courts have ordered ISPs to block the websites of a number of torrenting sites. In Roadshow Films Pty Ltd v Telstra Corporation Ltd [2016] FCA 1503, Justice Nicholas ordered a collection of ISPs to block the websites of a number of well-known bittorrenting sites. The sites included in the blocking order are The Pirate Bay, Torrentz, TorrentHound, IsoHunt and SolarMovie.

As explained in previous briefings, the new Civil and Commercial Code includes a series of rules referring, either directly or indirectly, to intellectual and industrial property matters which we have already reviewed in detail.