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Our services are centred around intellectual property that can be registered. We protect innovation, design, and branding across all sectors of industry, and at all stages in the supply chain.
For each IP right we offer services covering strategic advice, pre-registration searches, registrations and renewals, oppositions and dispute resolution. We handle work throughout the world, working with local colleagues in over 100 countries.
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Our attorneys specialise in one or more sectors of industry, which enables them to provide quality advice with a commercial focus.
Our patent specialists have detailed understanding of the background technology, which ensures that your patent applications are prepared with the correct scope, reducing the likelihood of challenges from third parties and objections from the patent office.
They also advise whether other forms of protection would be more appropriate. Our brand specialists work with brand managers for leading brands and their advice is commercially focussed making sure that you get the best value from your budget.
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The EPO’s Enlarged Board of Appeal has appointed oral proceedings to be held (by video conference) on 28 May 2021. The Enlarged Board will consider the legality of oral proceedings by video conference if not all parties agree to it. This is in response to oral proceedings we attended in February, where a Technical Board […]
We attended oral proceedings last month on case T1807/15 and learned that the Board of Appeal would make a referral to the EPO’s Enlarged Board of Appeal on video conference oral proceedings without parties’ consent. We have received a copy of the written interlocutory decision of the Board of Appeal. We now know that a single question has been referred to the Enlarged Board:
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.
Drug discovery is expensive. Computers are an important tool in combating this, because their computations can reduce the number of time-consuming physical tests needed. The use of computers in drug discovery is the subject of a great deal of research and we saw an example of this in the news last week when it was reported that a powerful new antibiotic had been discovered using artificial intelligence (see J. Stokes et al., “A Deep Learning Approach to Antibiotic Discovery”, Cell, vol. 180, no. 4, pp. 688-702.e13, 2020. Available: 10.1016/j.cell.2020.01.021, widely reported by the media).
In modern manufacturing and design processes, computer models and simulations play a key and ever expanding role. Whereas previously many different prototypes may have had to be individually machined and then tested, now each design can be tested virtually. This allows optimal designs to be found without incurring any of the expense, or expending any of the time, associated with manufacturing multiple custom prototype components and designs- here we focus on the automotive sector.
The referral to the Enlarged Board of Appeal relating to plants obtained by means of an essentially biological process.
An EPO Board of Appeal has referred the question of double-patenting to the Enlarged Board of Appeal (EBA).
We take a closer look at the pending referral by the EPO President to the Enlarged Board of Appeal (EBA) on the question of “inadmissible” or “late filed” appeals. This case involves an interesting and complex interplay of linguistic analysis, legislative intention and, dare we say it, EPO politics.