News

From 1 April 2024 the European Patent Office are introducing reduced fees for smaller and less experienced patent filers at the EPO. The new scheme offers a 30% fee reduction on a variety of EPO fees for ‘micro entities’ who have filed fewer than 5 European patents in the last 5 years. The applicable ‘micro […]

Yet another David v Goliath trade mark dispute before the UKIPO with David coming out on top. The UKIPO delivers another lesson to big brands on the pitfalls of being overzealous in their trade mark enforcement strategy before the UKIPO. It also brings to mind Zara’s failed attempt to oppose a UK trade mark application […]

Since launching on 1 June 2023, the Unified Patent Court has received around 190 actions. This includes 67 infringement actions, 25 revocation actions, 79 counterclaims for revocation and some applications for provisional measures, applications for preserving evidence and one declaration of non-infringement. The chart below shows each of these as a percentage of the total […]

Last year we reported here that the Enlarged Board of Appeal had established in G2/21 new guidance for determining when post‑published evidence can be relied upon to support an inventive step at the EPO.   It was, however, unclear how this guidance would be applied going forward.  The written decision of the Board of Appeal in […]

The UK Supreme Court have issued their judgement in Thaler v Comptroller-General thus bringing the DABUS saga to a close in the UK (for now…). Initial headline summary: *Appeal dismissed* (a) Does section 13(2)(a) of the Patents Act 1977 (the “1977 Act”) require a person to be named as the inventor in all cases, including […]

My latest comment on the decision of the Austrian Supreme Court of 22.11.2022 – 4 Ob 171/22, – “Gasteiner Energy Water” which will be published in GRUR-Prax – issue 22- on November 24, 2023, deals with the question of whether the sign “Gasteiner” can be registered as a trade mark for beverages. The Austrian Patent […]