Insights

Articles Nov272019

Innovation and investment: bottle-shaped metal cans

Although the overall environmental impact of glass versus plastic versus metal is debated, the beverage industry is innovating in this area in response to consumer demand for non-plastic packaging.

Articles Oct312019

IPEC refers questions to Court of Justice

Given the uncertainty of Brexit, the UK may no longer be a member state of the EU, which could impact the IP rights available to UK designers.

Articles Sep302019

The rise of patents in the health food industry

IP Solicitor Chris Thomas highlights the need for brand owners and manufacturers to protect trade secrets in the food and beverage industry.

Articles May312019

Can artificial intelligence match human intelligence?

Julia Gwilt and Parminder Lally attended the Cambridge Wireless event on "Narrowing the Intelligence Gap", hosted at Amazon's site in Cambridge. The event featured an excellent talk by Neil Lawrence (IPC Machine Learning at Amazon and Professor of Machine Learning at the University of Sheffield) on whether the latest AI is "more human".

Articles Feb272019

Patentability of products obtained from biological processes

After years of controversy, the Technical Board of Appeal (TBA) of the EPO has recently decided that products obtained by essentially biological processes can be patent protected (T1063/18).

Articles Jan292019

Missing the target with functional claim language

What’s the problem with ‘functional limitations’?

Articles Oct312018

Zombie trade marks: a refleshing update

Zombie trade marks take shape in many spooky forms. They are the abandoned, historic brands: the trade marks of businesses which are no longer actively trading. To the untrained eye, they can appear lifeless, but look a little closer, and there may still be a soul lurking behind the eyes.

Articles Oct242018

Does an overly-wide trade mark specification indicate bad faith?

TRUMP TV ON APPEAL TO HIGH COURTUKIPO decision number O-409-18Trade mark application no. 3193965 TRUMP TV in the name of Trump International Limited and opposition

Articles May042018

Rules of Procedure of the Boards of Appeal

Howard Read discusses the revisions to the Rules of Procedure of the Boards of Appeal at the European Patent Office.

Articles Mar292018

Processing language: A patent overview

Language, be it written or spoken, can be vague, ambiguous and difficult to interpret.

Articles Jan272018

Broad Institute CRISPR Patent Decision

The Board of Appeal of the EPO dismissed the Broad Institute’s appeal against the Opposition Division’s previous decision to revoke one of their patents covering CRISPR gene editing technology (EP2771468) on 16 January 2020.