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Contents Meet IP’s most influential people

Debate around intellectual property's role in society is as old as society itself. Here, Managing IP identifies influential business and entertainment figures that are shaping the current arguments, and changing the business model for monetising IP. Some are IP practitioners at businesses who go beyond their day job to influence the debate; some are disrupters forcing a change in how patents are monetised and enforced; while others are complete outsiders who find themselves embroiled in disputes that shape IP law.

In a recent interview with Managing IP, former SIPO commissioner Tian Lipu said that IP disputes should be treated as a matter between private parties rather than a political argument. But is this even possible?

On May 13, 2014 the Grand Chamber of the Court of Justice delivered a landmark decision concerning the responsibilities of Google, a popular search engine, under the EU Data Protection directive.

On May 29 2014, the DNS.PT Association, which is responsible for the management, registration and maintenance of domains under the top-level domain (TLD) .pt, published changes to the rules for the registration of domain names in the .pt domain. The changes came into force on June 16 2014.

In a recent decision, the Federal Administrative Court confirmed the rejection by the Swiss Trade Mark Office of an application for the mark Venus for printed matter in international class 16.

According to Article 7 of the Patent Law, the employer in principle owns the right to file a patent application for an invention made by an employee and to the resulting patent. As for what is considered an employee invention, Article 7 merely states that it is one that is completed by the employee in the performance of his work during the employment period.

The definiteness requirement of Section 112(b) of the Patent Act mandates that claims "particularly point[] out and distinctly claim[] the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention". The disagreement in Nautilus v Biosig centered on how much imprecision this definiteness requirement tolerates. In the Federal Circuit's view, a claim was indefinite only if it is "insolubly ambiguous" or not "amenable to construction". A unanimous Supreme Court criticised the standard as "more amorphous than the statutory definiteness requirement allows", citing lower courts' confusion, but also acknowledged that the Federal Circuit's "fuller explications of the term 'insolubly ambiguous' may come closer to tracking the statutory prescription" for definiteness.

Ski in ski out is a registered Community trade mark. Its owner and the plaintiff owns a hotel in an Austrian skiing area situated directly at the skiing slope so that one can directly ski to and from the hotel. The defendant owns a restaurant in the same skiing area. It advertises its business indirectly that its restaurant lies directly at the skiing slope "always in the middle with Ski in & Ski out", "Ski in & Ski out ... in the whole winter". The plaintiff wanted to forbid the use of Ski in & Ski out. The defendant pointed to fair use under Article 12 (b) CTMR to which the plaintiff replied that the defendant would have to file an invalidity action before OHIM if it wants to use an identical mark. Since it did not file such an action, it infringes the CTM.

In a recent judgment, the multi-bench Court of First Instance in Athens (specialised section in IP matters) clarified that certain defences that may be raised by defendants in trade mark infringement cases are impermissible.