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In April 2016, the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB) issued a precedential decision in Noble House Home Furnishings, LLC v Floorco Enterprises, LLC. This decision is a good reminder about the advisability of memorialising a grant of rights in situations where a company registers a mark in the name of one entity and then exploits the mark through a related entity.

In 2016, Korea has been substantially re-shaping its IP system. One such change is the Trade Mark Act, which has been comprehensively re-drafted. One of the main changes in trade mark is the non-use cancellation of the registered mark. When a registered trade mark has not been used in Korea for three consecutive years, third parties can seek to cancel it on the grounds of non-use. According to the existing Act, only an interested party can request cancellation of a non-used mark. However, under the new system, legal standing is no longer required; therefore, any person may request cancellation of a non-used registered mark. The new system is expected to accelerate the procedure and give more opportunity to those who actually intend to use the mark by remedying weaknesses in the registration system.

The USPTO filing a petition in the In re Tam case, the Supreme Court denying multiple IP appeals including Authors Guild v Google, Prince’s copyright legacy, Adidas suing Ecco for trade mark infringement, and IBM’s Manny Schecter’s thoughts on the future of Alice were in the intellectual property headlines in the past week

Marathon subsidiary Dynamic Advances will dismiss patent litigation with Apple related to the Siri personal assistant. Marathon may have to enter arbitration with co-plaintiff Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, however, which it believes “unreasonably withheld its consent to the reasonable royalty rate”

In a busy few days for trade secrets news, the House Judiciary Committee has approved a Senate-passed trade secrets bills with no changes and Indian company Tata has been hit with a $940m damages verdict in Wisconsin

In our regular round-up, we summarise recently-announced partner moves in the Americas, including hires by Norton Rose Fulbright, Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton, Mayer Brown, Reed Smith and Honigman Miller Schwartz and Cohn

Juan José Caselles of Elzaburu in Madrid discusses the recently published OECD/EUIPO report on counterfeit goods

The California-based counsel shares her views on the state of the IP environment in the US and how professionals can contribute to improvements, particularly in the patent field

Managing IP crunches the data to reveal the busiest petitioners, patent owners, law firms, and attorneys at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board in the first three months of 2016. The quarter included some interesting petitions such as the first IPR challenging an Apple patent

The number of petitions filed at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board in March was down on the previous month. So far this USPTO fiscal year, the percentage of challenges to mechanical/business method and bio/pharma patents has increased