AWA Point
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...
Filed under: Insights
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...
Filed under: Insights
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...
Filed under: Insights
Tags: IP strategy
Kalle Sax: One to watch
By AWA | Posted on March 1, 2017
There is always time to follow your dreams. After facing redundancy, Swedish entrepreneur Kalle Sax decided to become a professional watchmaker and turn his into reality. Spurred on by a life-long fascination for technology and mechanics, Kalle became interested in watches as a teenager. He gained further insight into its complex mechanics when he worked...
Filed under: Interviews
Tags: entrepreneur, IP, startup
Rapunzel of Sweden: What’s in a name?
By AWA | Posted on March 1, 2017
When Ida Backlund started her own business selling hair extensions online, she soon realised the impact of a name and the importance of protecting it. “My mother had read me the story about Rapunzel and it was a perfect fit for my budding enterprise,” says Ida. A fairytale She had originally registered her business as...
Family run company defies odds to beat dairy giant in inspirational trademark case
By AWA | Posted on February 28, 2017
David vs. Goliath: Small, family-run company Yogiboost’s fight for justice after being sued for trademark infringement by dairy giant Arla. We speak to Yogiboost’s legal representative Kristina Fredlund, European Trademark Attorney at Awapatent It has been an entrepreneurial fairytale for the Englers. Self-proclaimed ‘ice cream fanatics’, Ludvik Engler Georgsson and Birgit Engler together with their...
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...
Filed under: Insights
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...
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