17th Aug 2020
The Automotive Group at Reddie & Grose recently held a virtual round-table with a select group of experts in the industry. We had representatives from an electric vehicle start-up, an energy services company, an automotive funding platform, an energy and sustainability strategy consultancy, the IMechE’s Powertrains and Fuels group, and a barrister who is a specialist in the law of Connected & Autonomous Vehicles.We set ourselves the ambitious agenda of discussing the likely key technologies to emerge in the next 10 years in powertrains, energy storage and delivery, autonomy, and sustainability, and whether there would be any legal challenges to overcome, IP or otherwise. With the long list of discussion topics in mind, we jumped off from the UK government’s proposal to end the sale of new petrol, diesel and hybrid vehicles by 2035, or even 2032. What would that mean for the industry, and would it be effective at reducing greenhouse gas emissions? The conversation flowed from there …
12th Aug 2020
OFF-WHITE has won its appeal at the General Court to register the OFF-WHITE black and white logo trade mark in the EU following the decision of the EUIPO that the mark is inherently descriptive and non-distinctive.
30th Jul 2020
On-demand, rental electric scooters are seen as a way of easing the pressure on public transport systems during the COVID-19 crisis. Although e-scooters have been in the UK for some time now, e-scooter rentals only became legal on UK roads on 4 July 2020. Up until 4 July 2020, it was illegal to use e-scooters on any public road or footpath in the UK. Even with the change in the law, it is still illegal to use a privately owned e-scooter on a public road or a footpath in the UK. This article takes a look at the patent portfolios of some of the major players in e-scooter rentals.
22nd Jul 2020
Artificial intelligence is increasingly an important tool in industry. Not just in computer science but in almost all fields of industry. And where an AI innovation provides a benefit to users, many would like to protect it with a patent. The European Patent Office (EPO) recognises this. In 2017 the EPO published a study on the ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’ that identified AI as a key enabling technology. As we reported previously, the EPO has held a conference discussing the patentability of AI. And the EPO has recently announced that their Berlin branch is to become a centre of expertise in AI. So it is worth looking at how AI inventions can be patented in Europe.
16th Jul 2020
Manchester United FC has initiated trade mark infringement proceedings in the High Court against SEGA Publishing Europe Limited, the European arm of the Japanese video-game brand, and Sports Interactive Limited, producers of the video game Football Manager®. The game Football Manager® has been around since 1992 and is a hugely successful football management simulation video game. Players can manage their own virtual equivalents of real life clubs, controlling everything from pre-season transfers to the tactics on the pitch.
16th Jul 2020
In November 2019, Reddie & Grose reported on a decision of the UK IPO in relation to a partially-successful opposition by Unilever PLC to UK Application No 3298871. The applicant’s appeal against this decision has now been dismissed, despite an acknowledgement from the Appointed Person that “valid criticisms” had been made about Unilever’s evidence of use as part of their opposition. This case confirms the well-established principle that it is not essential to file specific types of evidence in order to prove use of a mark, but that the evidence as a whole must demonstrate genuine use. It also suggests that genuine use of a mark may be found even if the evidence filed relates to a precursor of the protected goods, rather than the protected goods themselves: in this case, the relevant protected goods were “ice cream”, while the evidence primarily related to sales of ice cream mix.
15th Jul 2020
We have just finished watching the oral proceedings before the EPO’s Enlarged Board of Appeal (EBA) on case G1/19 concerning the patentability of computer simulations. We were not alone – some 1,600 people signed up to watch today’s oral proceedings by live stream. Unfortunately (but not unexpectedly) no decision was announced during the proceedings. However, we did get to hear some of the EBA’s thoughts on the issues.
14th Jul 2020
Innovate UK – together with the Advanced Propulsion Centre (APC), the Department for Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), and the Department for International Trade (DIT) – have opened a new funding competition: The Automotive Transformation Fund. This funding competition can be seen as part of the UK government’s broader Road to Zero Strategy which seeks to reduce vehicle emissions to zero by 2050, and, perhaps more ambitiously, aims for at least half of new cars to be “ultra-low emission” by 2030.