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After much dispute, discussion and delay, the Unified Patent Court launch officially took place this morning at 9 am CET (1 June 2023). Organisations can now benefit from a new unitary patent (UP) right and access the new Europe-wide patent court system (UPC).
In disputes over pharmaceutical trademarks, the courts take a precautionary approach to exclude any risk of confusion between two medicines marketed under similar brand names. However, this restrictive approach has been qualified by EU case law, as Florence Chapin explains.
Parallel imports, also known as ‘exhaustion of trademark rights’ or the ‘first sale doctrine’, is a well-known limitation to the rights of trademark owners. Volha Parfenchyk discusses the practice in the context of two recent EU rulings on the branding of generic medicinal products.
Changes to trademark registration requirements promised to herald a new era for non-traditional trademarks, such as shape marks, in the EU. But, has anything really changed for trademark owners, asks Megan Creemers.
The sessions scheduled at INTA's 2023 Annual Meeting remind us that trademarks are not the only rights to consider when looking at brand protection.
26 April is World IP Day! This year's theme is 'Women and IP: Accelerating innovation and creativity', which provides an opportunity to talk about why it is important for women to be part of climate change innovation solutions, and to highlight a few of the women leading the way.
As a tech start-up specialist, Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) held pledges on numerous patent rights. Rose-Marie Ehanno explains how patent pledges work and what the collapse of SVB means for affected patent holders.
Artist Mason Rothschild has been ordered to pay Maison Hermès International US$133,000, after a New York jury rejected his defence of freedom of expression to find instead that his ‘MetaBirkin’ NFT infringed the fashion house’s trademark rights.
Air France KLM has successfully brought EU trademark opposition proceedings on the grounds of likelihood of confusion for the trademark ‘Flying Blue’ and the domain name flyingblue.com, as used for the airline's frequent flyer programme. Frouke Hekker outlines the EUIPO ruling and explains how likelihood of confusion is assessed.