AWA
Don’t be in the wrong room!
By AWA | Posted on November 14, 2011
Someone once said that “if you are the smartest person in the room, you are in the wrong room”. Here at Awapatent, as long as you’re not alone at the office, the risk of being in the wrong room is small. This comes as no surprise if you know something about the work at an...
Busy weeks of practice
By AWA | Posted on November 4, 2011
This is now the third week of the first practice period at the home office. Now I find myself thinking about IP everywhere I go; when I see a logotype, when I see a clever invention, even when I see the tiny TM-mark after a company name. I am becoming someone who must tell her...
Patentability of inventions relating to human embryonic stem cells
By AWA | Posted on October 20, 2011
The Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) has recently issued a decision clarifying the situation on patentability, in Europe, of inventions relating to human embryonic stem cells. In the decision it is declared that the concept of a “human embryo”, the exploitation of which is excluded from patentability according to the EU Biotechnology Directive...
Tags: awapatent, CJ, EPO, Patent, Stem cells
Trademark Infringements in Social Networks
By AWA | Posted on August 18, 2011
Trademark Infringements in Social Networks Last year, in 2010, Facebook passed 500 million users. That’s more than the population of USA, Canada and Mexico put together. It is safe to say that Facebook and other social networks are very powerful and important tools of communication in many different aspects, affecting most things from your personal...
Tags: Infringement, Internet, Media, Social Networks, Trademark
Software inventions: The BGH confirms examination approach
By AWA | Posted on June 22, 2011
By its judgment in X ZR 121/09 (Webseitenanzeige), the German Federal Court of Justice (BGH) recently nullified one of Siemens AG’s German patents (English-language version) for lacking technical character. The judgment can be said to belong to the same lineage as Xa ZB 20/08 (Dynamische Dokumentengenerierung), which was reported in AWA IP Review 2/2010, and...
Counterfeit pharmaceuticals case settled without main hearing
By AWA | Posted on June 1, 2011
In April 2010 Eli Lilly and Company (“Lilly”), the manufacturer of the erectile dysfunction pharmaceutical Cialis, was informed that the Swedish customs had ceased a consignment of products marked and/or shaped in such a way that it was suspected to infringe the intellectual property rights of Lilly. The consignment was addressed to an individual, herein...
Tags: EEA, Infringement, Pharmaceuticals
A Favourite in Trademark Law: Repackaging – now gassy
By AWA | Posted on April 14, 2011
Danish courts are traditionally reluctant to ask preliminary questions on the interpretation of EU-legislation. Recently, the Supreme Court has done so, and quite comprehensively. During the 1990’s there were countless cases all over Europe regarding repackaging of products, especially medicines and printer toner cartridges, after parallel imports from one state to another. This case is a new...
The EPO starts cooperation with Google to provide machine translation of patents
By AWA | Posted on March 29, 2011
On 24 March, the EPO and Google signed an agreement to collaborate on machine translation of patents. Using Google Translate technology, the EPO will offer translations into 28 European languages, and into Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Russian. In order to be able to adapt the machine translation to the specific language used in patents, Google...
Tags: EPO, Google, Translation
Supplementary protection certificates for plant protection products
By AWA | Posted on November 15, 2010
11 November 2010 the Court of Justice of the European Union issued a preliminary ruling in the case C-229/09 that Supplementary protection certificates for plant protection products may validly be obtained based on provisional marketing authorisations In this recent decision by the Court of Justice (CJ) it was ruled that a supplementary protection certificate (SPC)...
IP in China? It’s not all bad
By AWA | Posted on June 7, 2010
Recent statistics on the outcomes of reported IP litigations in the most important courts in China are encouraging: The total number of trademark-related cases in 2009 handled by the Chinese courts was 6,906, up almost 11 per cent from 2008. 2008 was up by 79 per cent in relation to 2007. Administratively, the numbers are...
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