Businesses in every sector are under pressure to innovate to stay ahead of the competition. ‘’Open innovation’’ is a term that has come to describe innovation which extends beyond the traditional R&D department of a business and embraces a broader pool of talent and ideas within the whole business and frequently also extends to an external partnership with a third party collaborator to assist with and accelerate the process. In our second publication Data issues in innovation and collaborations, following on from our Open Innovation: Collaborate To Innovate report, we take a more detailed look at how data frequently plays a central role in the drive towards ‘’open’’ innovation and the significant value attached to it. Data can be used to generate new products or services and revenue streams, to identify efficiencies within an organisation and reduce costs, and to inform strategic decision-making. Read more

The outcome is still awaited of the constitutional case objecting to a ratification of the UPCA by Germany, which was listed to be decided in 2019.  In a recent interview, Judge Huber of the German Federal Constitutional Court (which is the court due to decide the case) denied that the delay had anything to do with Brexit, rather that other important cases were also waiting to be decided and took precedence. He suggested that the case might be decided in the early part of 2020. Read more

On Thursday 7 November, our London IP team hosted a panel discussion and roundtable session on 'Harnessing the power of diversity in IP'. This was part of an ongoing campaign with World IP Review (WIPR), to celebrate the achievements of influential women in IP and to improve gender diversity in the profession. Read more

The BBC thriller The Capture has captured the public’s imagination with its portrayal of the relationship between deepfakes and CCTV evidence, and the serious legal risks associated with this technology. In a recent report published by non-profit research institute Data & Society, deepfakes were found to be “no new threat to democracy”, in that audiovisual … Read more

The CJEU’s Advocate-General (‘AG’) has delivered his Opinion that a registered trade mark cannot be declared invalid solely due to the terms used in the mark’s specification lacking ‘sufficient’ clarity and precision. However, this statement came with the substantial caveat that a lack of clarity and precision in the specification could cause the application/registration to … Read more

“Contextual commerce”, the next retail frontier? One-click purchasing platforms that link the immediate “want” with the immediate “sell”. Read all about it in the latest edition in our Future of Consumer series on challenges facing the consumer and retail sector: Do you want it right now? The exciting future of contextual commerce. E-commerce has revolutionised … Read more

Unregistered Community designs (UCDs) became available in 2002 via the Community Designs Regulation as a new kind of short term protection (3 years) across the EU, aimed at providing protection for designs where either the market was moving too fast for it to be worth registering the design, as is often the case in the … Read more

In our recent report on our clients’ perspectives on managing innovation in their organisations “Open Innovation: Collaborate To Innovate” we shared our insights into the world of open collaboration assisted by contributions from a wide range of our clients. As part of our analysis we highlighted the main legal considerations that arise in restructuring a collaboration arrangement. In our first publication following on from the report – Getting the IP right in collaborations – we take a more detailed look at some of the principal intellectual property issues and set out practical steps to consider when embarking on collaboration projects. Read more