Insights
Can you not patent a beer?
By Anders Heebøll-Nielsen | Posted on March 31, 2017
On 15 March 2017, the coalition No Patents on Seeds issued a press release to stop patents on beer, which was cited by inter alia the journal Ingeniøren of the Danish Society of Engineers. But can you really not patent a beer? I will summarise the situation. In 1998, the EU Directive 98/44/EC on the...
BEPS from an IP perspective, Part 2
By AWA | Posted on March 27, 2017
Part 2: Transfer Pricing documentation requirements From 1 April 2017, BEPS action 13 guidelines on transfer pricing (TP) documentation will be effective in Sweden. Action 13 is an effort to make MNEs global financial situation more transparent. It is a three-tiered based approach including a master file, local files and country by country reporting (CbCR)....
The EPO improving timeliness and granting patents at a record level
By AWA | Posted on March 20, 2017
After having a brief look at the statistics in the EPO (European Patent Office) annual report of 2016, which was recently published, it was clear that something had happened. During 2016, almost 96 000 patents were granted, which is a massive 40% increase in comparison to 2015. The number of patent applications filed in 2016 were...
Tags: EPO, European patents
Final meeting of the Preparatory Committee signals pending start of UPC
By AWA | Posted on March 17, 2017
On 15 March 2017, the UPC Preparatory Committee hopefully met for the last time before the start of the provisional application phase. During the meeting, the Committee agreed on a final suite of legal, HR and financial documents as well as coming to a decision regarding the state of readiness for a provisional application. The...
Tags: UPC
Strategy in Focus – Part 1
By AWA | Posted on March 17, 2017
In this series of blog posts called “Strategy in Focus”, AWA Strategy explores the topics of IP strategy, infrastructure and management. For the premiere, we look into the purpose of implementing an IP strategy and how it ties together with infrastructure and portfolio management. IP for Creating and Maintaining Competitive Advantages For a firm to...
Tags: IP strategy
PPH agreement between EP and PL enters into force as Poland joins the GPPH
By Troels Peter Rørdam | Posted on February 24, 2017
The ever expanding PPH network keeps getting new additions and as always the AWAPATENT Blog sums up the new expansions and arising possibilities. To recall, for a given PPH agreement the PPH allows the requesting of accelerated examination at offices participating in the agreement. It is based on the search results and a set of...
What opportunities and risks come with the new Top Level Domains (TLDs)?
By Marcus Glaad | Posted on February 20, 2017
When ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) launched the new TLD Program, the purpose was to stimulate innovation and competition in the domain- and Internet industry and to give the possibility to own and run a top level domain. ICANN received over 1900 applications for 1400 new top level domains. A total of...
Tags: domain, domain name, TLD
Broad Institute maintains patents to Gene Scissors in the US
By Joanna Applequist | Posted on February 17, 2017
The CRISPR-Cas9 technology, the so called “gene scissors” which allow for targeted genome-editing, is subject to a patent dispute between two research teams lead by Jennifer Doudna at UC Berkeley and Emanuelle Charpentier then at the University of Vienna on one hand, and Feng Zhang’s lab at the Broad Institute and MIT on the other....
Tags: cas9, crispr, crispr-cas9
New UK intellectual property minister reaffirms UK commitment to the Unified Patent Court
By AWA | Posted on February 1, 2017
There is a new sheriff in town. Jo Jonson takes over from Baroness Neville Rolfe as UK Intellectual Property minister. He was appointed new minister on 11 January. Baroness Neville Rolfe has previously made some promising statements concerning the UK’s intentions to ratify the agreement on a unified patent court (UPC). Jo Johnson has now...
BEPS from an IP perspective
By AWA | Posted on January 24, 2017
Part 1 – Introduction to BEPS for IP professionals The focus on IP related issues is becoming increasingly more relevant as our economy is changing to become more digital and knowledge based. More are realising the potential of their intangibles and what commercial gains can be won if managed properly. The possible threats and costly...
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