Patent Strategy: "The EPO’s justification for refusing a patent application that had an artificial intelligence tool listed as the inventor does not provide enough clarity on the rules surrounding AI-generated inventions, according to in-house and private practice IP lawyers.

[...]

As one of the reasons...

Trade Mark Law - Geographical Indications - The Copyright Directive must be interpreted as not precluding national legislation which establishes, as regards the exploitation of audiovisual archives by a body set up for that purpose, a rebuttable presumption that the performer has authorised the fixation and...

Copyright - Case C- 833/18: Brompton Bicycle v Chedech. Opinion A-G Campos Sánchez-Bordona.

Copyright. The referring court must determine whether a bicycle whose folding system was protected by a patent which has now expired can be classified as a work eligible for copyright protection. According to the...

Trade Mark Law - No genuine use of medicine during clinical trials in the case of a medicinal product which has not yet been granted a marketing authorisation, it is not even possible to advertise it in order to gain or maintain a market share, uses prior to imminent trading may be genuine use if they are external in...

Plant Variety Rights - Planting of a protected variety and harvesting of the thereof, which is not liable to be used as propagating material may not be regarded as an ‘act of production or reproduction (multiplication)’ of variety constituents within the meaning of Article 13(2)(a) Community Plant Variety Rights...

Privacy - Prohibition of processing of personal data under Directive 95/46 applies to Google: subject to the exceptions provided for by the directive, Google has the obligation to comply with a request for de-referencing to web pages containing personal data. Google may refuse to accede to a request for de-referencing...

From the press release: "Liège was incorporated into the office network of V.O. Patents & Trademarks today. V.O. now has two offices in Belgium - in Leuven and Liège - and eight offices in the Netherlands and Germany. Altogether, more than 60 specialists work in these ten offices, helping all kinds of companies, from...

Trade mark law - A Community trade mark or a national trade mark cannot be declared wholly or partially invalid on the ground that terms used to designate the goods and services in respect of which that trade mark was registered lack clarity and precision: the lack of clarity and precision of the terms used to...

"Since the UK voted to leave the EU in 2016’s referendum, HGF has worked to ensure that Brexit will just mean ‘business as usual’ for its clients. However, ongoing negotiations and unresolved political debate on the future status of the UK in its relationship with the EU has created an environment of uncertainty for...

Design law - Private International Law - Article 90(1) of the Community Designs Regulation provides that the courts of the Member States which have jurisdiction to order provisional or protective measures in respect of a national design shall also have jurisdiction to order such measures in respect of a Community...

WIPO press release: "The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) today launched a public consultation process on artificial intelligence (AI) and intellectual property (IP) policy, inviting feedback on an issues paper designed to help define the most-pressing questions likely to face IP policy makers as AI...

Copyright - The supply to the public by downloading, for permanent use, of an e-book is covered by the concept of ‘communication to the public’: from the explanatory memorandum of the Directive follows that the intention was that any communication to the public of a work, other than the distribution of physical copies...

Consumer Law - Foodstuffs originating in territories occupied by the State of Israel bear the indication of their territory of origin, accompanied, where those foodstuffs come from an Israeli settlement within that territory, by the indication of that provenance. It follows from Regulation No 1169/2011 (on the...

Trademark Law - The General Court has incorrectly assessed if a collective mark that has been registered in over 30 classes in order to enable the consumer to distinguish goods and packaging that are part of a specific recycling system from other goods and packaging: the essential function of an EU collective mark is...

Protected designation of origin - geographical indications - The protection of the name ‘Aceto Balsamico di Modena’ does not extend to the use of the non-geographical terms of that name such as ‘aceto’ and ‘balsamico’ and ‘aceto’ and ‘balsamico’ are common terms.

Trade Mark Law - Appellant has sufficient interest in appeal: annulment of the contested revocation decision would be in the appellant’s favour. Error in law of General Court to base the revocation decision on the general principle of law that permits the revocation of unlawful administrative acts instead of Article 80...

Case C-785/19: Koch Media GmbH v HC. Landgericht Saarbrücken - Germany.

Litigation. Preliminary reference on the interpretation of Article 14, 13 and 3 of the Enforcement Directive, Article 8 of the Copyright Directive and Article 7 of the Computer Program Directive. 

Preliminary questions:

"1. a) Is...

From the executive summary: "The analysis is based on a rich set of data on access to pirated music, film and TV programmes in all 28 Member States, for the period January 2017 to September 2018. The data covers both fixed and mobile devices, as well as the main access methods: streaming, downloads, torrents and stream...

From the executive summary:

"Assessment has been carried out for the whole EU-28 market as well as for each Member State. Main findings suggest that:

- 3.6 % Europeans (13.7 million of the EU-28 population) stream unauthorised IPTV

- EUR 941.7 million Unlawful revenue generated by copyright infringing IPTV...

Case C-728/19: Beverly Hills Teddy Bear v PMS International Group PLC. High Court of Justice (Chancery Division) - United Kingdom.

Design Law. Preliminary reference on the interpretation of Articles 5(1)(a), 7(1) and 11 of Council Regulation (EC) No. 6/2002 of 12 December 2001.

Preliminary questions: