The Unified Patent Court will start to accept cases on 1 June 2023 and the sunrise period for opt-out of European patents from the new court's jurisdiction will start on 1 March. Germany has today (17 February 2023) deposited its instrument of ratification of the Unified Patent Court Agreement (UPCA), the final ratification required to trigger the run-up period to the start of the UPC. The arrival of the UPC will mark a fundamental change in patent litigation in Europe, providing a one-stop-shop for resolution of patent disputes - with the possibility of pan-European injunction and damages awards but also of the revocation (loss) of patents across participating states in one action too Read more

Uses of machine learning and AI are expanding rapidly, and IP rights play a critical role in both regulating the use of AI and protecting the rights of inventors and creators. In this series, we will explore the key challenges governments worldwide are currently grappling with in order to provide the right level of protection … Read more

The creation ("minting") and sale and use of NFTs raises many IP issues which we have discussed in our previous posts in our IP in NFTs series. However, brand owners and product manufacturers must also be vigilant in monitoring the virtual marketplaces to ensure that third parties are not creating NFTs that infringe their own IP rights.  This is especially true where the company is considering releasing or has released NFTs, because the public will begin to associate the brand with NFTs (which could include infringing NFTs).  There are several strategies that companies could adopt to minimise this risk. Read more

As we reported in our first blog post in this series, non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are a new asset class that is being adopted eagerly across all sectors, raising some interesting challenges from an IP perspective. While NFTs have demonstrated themselves to be a powerful tool in the new digital era, they remain poorly understood, in particular in relation to the rights that are (or are not) transferred on purchase of an NFT. Releasing (known as "minting") and purchasing NFTs can give rise to a number of IP-related issues, such as: - Who has the right to create and release NFTs? - Does the NFT infringe third party rights? - What rights are transferred with the NFT (and on resale)? - How this rights transfer is achieved? Read more

The China State Administration for Market Regulation has published a Regulation on Prohibition for Abuse of Intellectual Property Rights to Exclude or Restrict Competition (Draft for Comment), which is now open to the public for comments.  The Regulation reflects the latest approach of the China authorities to the relationship between competition law and intellectual property enforcement, which has been a topic of concern for a long time, and includes clarification on scenarios that will be deemed abuses of market dominance in relation to SEP licensing. Read more

China has recently seen the first decision in a case initiated under its patent linkage system. Under this system, when a generic drug company files an application for marketing authorisation, it can make one of four declarations, including that there is a registered patent relating to the product but it will be declared invalid or … Read more