19th Oct 2020
The United Kingdom (UK) left the European Union (EU) on 31 January 2020. It’s been business as usual during the current transition period, but all that will change from 1 January 2021 when “post-Brexit” reality dawns. We still do not know how the issue of the border between Ireland (part of the EU) and Northern Ireland (part of the UK) will be resolved post-Brexit.
9th Oct 2020
Amazon’s intellectual property (IP) policy is designed to protect sellers by preventing the sale of counterfeit or knockoff goods on Amazon’s various websites. But, what can you do, as a seller, if you think one or more of your product listings has been unfairly removed because of an existing registered design (or design right)?
5th Oct 2020
Concise guide to Brexit and intellectual property
1st Oct 2020
Last week, the European Patent Office (EPO), together with the International Energy Agency (IEA), released a detailed report on patenting activity in electricity storage between 2000 and 2018. An EPO press release is available on the EPO website along with the full report.
21st Sep 2020
The EUIPO is Now a Member of the WIPO Digital Access Service. As of 12 September 2020, the EUIPO is allowing registered Community design applicants to both deposit and retrieve priority documents using the WIPO DAS system. This is a step that has been long awaited by design attorneys given that 98% of registered Community design applications are now filed online.
14th Sep 2020
The Internet of Things (IoT) is the idea that any object might be connected to the internet. Such objects could be elementary devices such sensors or actuators. Or they might be ‘smart’ versions of everyday devices, e.g. home appliances, electricity meters, or ‘wearables’. The internet connectivity allows all of these objects to interact either with each other or with servers. In some cases it provides improved functionality for the smart object. In other cases, benefits arise through the use of vast numbers of smart devices, feeding data to and from servers and other devices. Some commentators believe the IoT will totally revolutionise our lives, to the extent that it has been described as the 4th Industrial Revolution.
11th Sep 2020
Your engineers have been working on an exciting innovation. Their ideas have been developed in secret, and now they are ready for testing, which presents the issue of how to keep these new ideas secret. In the renewable energy sector, machines can be BIG. Consider GE’s Haliade X. This offshore wind turbine is 260 metres tall, and its rotor alone measures 220 metres. How do you test something like this in private?
11th Sep 2020
The Supreme Court decision in Unwired Planet and others ([2020] UKSC 37) represents the culmination of a series of trials, begun in 2014, and involving several key players in the telecommunications industry