Posts Tagged: "EU"

Regulators face a twofold challenge: First, they need to balance the legitimate interests of patent holders and licensees in order to determine which activities and contracts the law will enforce, or otherwise recognize as creating legal rights. Second, they need to establish rules that minimize both the costs of assessing a given case, and the costs of taking wrong decisions. One traditional approach has been to use antitrust law.

The new European Community Trade Mark Regulation, as approved by Regulation (EU) 2015/2424 of the European Parliament, entered into force on March 23, 2016. Among other amendments, the provisions of Article 28(8) of the new Regulation substantially change the approach to interpretation of ICGS class headings included in the list of goods/services covered by EU trademarks applied for before June 2012. Previously, before June 22, 2012, a trade mark was deemed to be protected in respect of the entire range of ICGS goods and services included in the alphabetical list for that class provided that such trade mark was registered with reference to the heading of the respective ICGS class.

On 23 June 2016, the British citizens will hold their referendum on the country’s membership in the European Union. Should they vote for the UK to leave the EU (the so-called ‘Brexit’), the new European unitary patent system is likely to collapse before it started… If the UK was to refuse to ratify the European Patent Court Treaty after the exit vote on June 23 2016, the Treaty would also need to be renegotiated so that UK ratification is no longer required for the Treaty’s entry into force. Without such renegotiation, this requirement would only cease to apply when the UK has in fact left the EU.

The decision creates significant uncertainty for organizations who rely on Safe Harbor either for their own, internal data transfers, or because they use a service provider which, in turn, relies on Safe Harbor to provide adequacy for its transfers to the US. Alternative methods of addressing data transfers will be needed – such as implementing EU Commission approved data transfer agreements, or obtaining individual consent. Although the decision has invalidated Safe Harbor – with immediate effect – organizations will need to look to the reactions of national data protection authorities to determine how urgently to implement alternative data transfer solutions.

American business interests could be adrift at sea after the European Court of Justice invalidated the U.S.-EU Safe Harbor agreement, which governs the transfer of data from European citizens to data centers outside of Europe. Meanwhile, the high tech world of Silicon Valley is getting a new, well-heeled neighbor when Japanese automaker Toyota Motors Corp. (NYSE:TM) realizes its plans of establishing a new five-year corporate venture focused on developing artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. Google is also undertaking the push to develop its own processing chips in an effort to stem fragmentation of Android device development.

The Consultation is part of the Commission’s assessment of the role of online platforms, promised in its Communication on a Digital Single Market Strategy for Europe (DSM) dated 6 May 2015. The Consultation covers a range of topics, including several controversial issues concerning transparency of online platforms and the proper extent of the hosting defence under the E-Commerce Directive. Interested parties have until around the end of December 2015 to respond (the exact closing date has not yet been published).

Most people are familiar with the four-finger KitKat bar which has been produced by Nestlé in the UK since 1935. In 2010 Nestlé decided to apply to register the four-finger shape of the KitKat bar as a trade mark. Cadbury, fearing Nestlé would be able to establish a monopoly on four-fingered chocolate products, raised an objection to the application. Nestlé were initially successful in their application but, following Cadbury’s legal challenge, the case escalated to the High Court and the CJEU where the shape was subjected to further scrutiny and ultimately rejected as a trademark.

Japan is also the country with the greatest number of foreign priority patent applications at the USPTO. With almost 1.1 million total foreign priority filings and over 389,000 foreign priority filings with the USPTO for utility patents since 2005, Japan is second only to domestic US patent applicants in terms of volume. While quantity does not always mean quality, Japanese filers are also the most successful in front of the USPTO with nearly 78% of patent applications allowed overall and nearly 79% of utility patent applications allowed since 2005.

When an undertaking operates in more than one country of the European Union it is a wise legal choice to apply for a trademark on a community level. A community trademark allows the applicant to file for a trademark within 28 countries of the European Union instead of the expensive and time consuming method of independent national filings for each country. The downside of the Community trademark application is with respect to satisfying the requirement of genuine use in connection with goods and services. Within 5 years of trademark registration the mark must be used in more than one country of the European community. In Sofa Workshop Limited v. Sofaworks Limited, the judgment elucidated upon the term “Genuine Use” in respect of trademarks and the territory covered by them.

In June, authorities in France served a formal notice to Google that it must delete certain links from it’s Google.com domain on a legal basis known as ‘the right to be forgotten.’ The right to be forgotten is implicated when an individual contacts a search engine company, such as Google, asking for a search result to be de-listed, essentially taking it out of their available search results. The provider assesses whether the privacy issue at stake has enough merit to de-list the link. If they don’t, the individual then has another avenue to take with a regulatory agency which may overturn the search engine provider’s decision.

With the Euro once again in crisis people look back on the decision to go with the common currency and many people here believe that that was a step too far. That engaging in the expectation that if we do this it will naturally bring us closer together was perhaps way too optimistic. And too risky. And that risking the kind of fiscal instability that we have seen recently in order to push everyone towards a closer political union some people are saying now was a very bad bet to make, without a real supra-national bank and without having first knitted the countries together better politically.