In 2015, the so-called Tomato-II and Broccoli-II cases (G 2/12 and G 2/13) reached decisions from the Enlarged Board of Appeal. These decisions held that ‘plant products such as fruits, seeds and parts of plants are patentable even if they are obtained through essentially biological breeding methods involving crossing...

From the press release: "Munich, 29 June 2017 -- On a proposal of the European Patent Office its Administrative Council took a decision to amend the relevant Regulations in order to exclude from patentability plants and animals exclusively obtained by an essentially biological breeding process.

Trade mark law - Free speech - The disparagement clause violates the First Amendment’s Free Speech Clause: the disparagement clause reaches any trademark that disparages any person, group, or institution, goes much further than necessary and is far too broad. The commercial market is well stocked with merchandise that...

Regulation (EU) 2017/1001 of 14 June 2017 on the European Union trade mark (codification) has been published in the Official Journal of the European Union on 16 June 2017.

Sales Descriptions - Purely plant based products may not be marketed under terms as ‘milk’ and other designations that are reserved exclusively for milk products by Regulation No 1308/2013: even if those terms are expanded upon by clarifying or descriptive terms indicating the plant origin of the product at issue...

Plant Variety Rights - General Court erred in law in the finding that Article 23(1) of the implementing regulation did not grant the President of the CPVO the power to insert, on completion of the technical examination of a variety, a new characteristic in respect of that variety: an application for a Community plant...

Copyright - The making available and management of an online sharing platform such as The Pirate Bay that offers an index classifying protected works and a search engine that allows users of that platform to locate those works and to share them in the context of a peer-to-peer network is a “communication to the public”...

The German Constitutional Court has asked the German legislator to put the implementation of the UPC on hold. The reason of this request, according to the German media, is a constitutional complaint by an unnamed private person.
 

Trade Mark Law - The use of an individual EU trade mark as a label of quality is not a genuine use. An individual trade mark cannot be declared invalid, on the basis of Article 52(1)(a) and Article 7(1)(g), because the proprietor of the mark fails to ensure, by carrying out periodic quality controls at its licensees...

A request for preliminary ruling in the case of the sampling of Kraftwerk’s Metall auf Metall.

IP-Portal publishes EU intellectual property materials for IP professionals and students of European IP law. IP-Portal is a publication of B9 Publishing, the publisher of the Dutch IP-website www.boek9.nl, live since 2004.

Trade Mark Law. Opinion of CJEU Advocate General Wahl after EUIPO appealed against a judgment in which the General Court held that the Court’s statement in IP Translator does not affect the extent of protection afforded by the earlier Cactus trade marks and that the designation of the class heading of Class 35 covers...

Trade Mark Law - Private International Law - A legally distinct second-tier subsidiary, with its seat in a Member State, of a parent body that has no seat in the European Union is an ‘establishment’, within the meaning of that provision, of that parent body if the subsidiary is a centre of operations which, in the...

Free trade - The Free Trade Agreement between the European Union and the Republic of Singapore does not completely fall within the exclusive competence of the European Union

Trade Mark Law - The General Court erred in law by stating that the goods and services covered by the application for registration of the sign ‘Deluxe’ displayed such differences as regards their nature, their characteristics, their intended use and the way in which they are marketed that they could not be considered a...

Trade Mark Law  - Ornamental and fanciful aspects do not preclude the ground for refusal under article 7(1)(e)(ii) of EU Trade Mark Regulation (exclusively the shape of goods that is necessary to obtain a technical result), in so far as those aspects do not play an important role in the shape of goods at issue, all the...

Trade Mark Law - Case law in respect to distinctiveness of three dimensional trade marks consisting of the appearance of the product itself also applies in respect of figurative marks consisting of the two-dimensional representation of the product. General Court did not err in law in applying the case law to the...

C-231/16, Merck v Merck, Opinion of A-G M. Szpunar. Prejudicial questions Landesgericht Hamburg.

Copyright - The sale of a multimedia player on which add-ons are installed that link to websites on which protected works are made available to internet users without the consent of the copyright holders, constitutes 'communication to the public'.

Patent Law. C-121/17. Teva UK, Accord Healthcare Limited, Lupin Limited, Lupin Europe Limited, Generics (UK) Limited and Gilead Sciences Inc. Request for a preliminary ruling. High Court of Justice (Chancery Division) - United Kingdom.

In a case concerning certificates for medicinal products, the High Court of...