Insights
How to protect your IP rights in Hong Kong
By Vibeke Warberg Rohde | Posted on February 2, 2010
Many people are aware of the important role that Hong Kong plays for trade in Asia, not least as a gateway to the Chinese market, yet few know much about how to go about protecting their intellectual property rights there. Since 1997 Hong Kong has had its own patent law under which a British or...
Tags: Asia, Chinese, English, Hong Kong, IP rights
Patent Prosecution Highway III – Geographical overview
By Troels Peter Rørdam | Posted on January 18, 2010
The concept of PPH was originally proposed by the Japanese Patent Office (JPO) as a bilateral agreement between the patent offices of two countries on using each other’s search and examination results in treating analogous patent applications, thereby allowing applicants in both offices to obtain analogous patents faster and more efficiently. The first PPH was...
What is the Patent Prosecution Highway?
By Troels Peter Rørdam | Posted on December 21, 2009
The Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH) is a concept originally proposed by the Japanese Patent Office (JPO). PPH has the purpose of increasing the speed and improving the quality of the prosecution of patent applications. This is achieved in that the patent offices of two countries make an agreement to use each other’s search and examination...
Trade Mark User Requirements Tightened Following US Supreme Court Ruling
By AWA | Posted on December 3, 2009
Following a key US Supreme Court ruling earlier this year we announced that the practice in regard to the fulfilment of the user requirements for trade marks has been tightened in the USA. Consequently, an entire trade mark registration can be cancelled if the owner can only prove use of trade mark for a part...
Software related inventions at the Enlarged Board of Appeals
By AWA | Posted on October 14, 2009
It is now almost a year since the President of the EPO referred four questions relating to the patentability of software related inventions to the Enlarged Board of Appeal (G03/08). The hope is of course that the EBA finally may put several issues to rest, issues that have been debated in and out of the...
Tags: inventions, patentability, Software, software patenting
Is the era of cascading divisionals coming to an end?
By AWA | Posted on October 6, 2009
Filing a divisional used to be a common procedure before oral proceedings as well as before grant of a patent. But for European applications this possibility has now been drastically restricted, and new rules concerning divisionals (rule 36 EPC) will be in place from April 1, 2010. Until recently there were considerable uncertainties regarding the application...
Changes to the German Intellectual Property Laws
By AWA | Posted on September 24, 2009
A series of changes to the German intellectual property laws was recently passed by the German parliament. The reforms enter into force on 1 October 2009. Of greatest importance are the changes to the patent law regarding patent invalidity proceedings. The changes aim at speeding up the process by limiting the possibility of making changes...
Tags: fee, filing, german intellectual property, patent application
Utility models are not what they used to be, at least not in Germany
By Kim Garsdal Nielsen | Posted on September 7, 2009
The German Supreme Court (Bundesgerichtshof) has ruled that there cannot be any difference between patents and utility models in the requirement for inventive step. Consequently, it will in most cases no longer make any sense to branch off a German utility model from a patent application if the latter is rejected because of lack of...
Tags: Germany, patents, utility models
Is your supplier really cheap or just a wolf in sheep’s clothing?
By Ole Bokinge | Posted on August 19, 2009
It is well known that many companies, for cost reasons, choose to manufacture and buy products in low-cost countries, such as China. The possibility of manufacturing in low-cost countries is now being offered widely to Swedish companies through agents. These agents are often Swedes, who themselves have worked in production, procurement and logistics in such...
Centocor (Johnson & Johnson) awarded the largest patent verdict in U.S. history
By AWA | Posted on July 6, 2009
1.67 billion U.S. dollars, $1.16 billion in lost profit, and $504 million in royalties. That’s what Centocor is awarded in damages for infringement of their patents. On Monday, June 29, a jury found that Abbott Laboratories had willfully infringed two patents covering antibodies against tumor necrosis factor owned by Centocor. Abbott’s drug Humira was found...
Tags: Infringement, Patent, verdict
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