It is now confirmed that there will be a referral to the Enlarged Board of Appeal (EBA) on the correct approach to claim interpretation. The Board of Appeal in T 0439/22 had previously indicated that they were minded to refer a question to the EBA on how much the description should be used to interpret the claims (IPKat). The published minutes of oral proceedings from a hearing in the case last week confirm that the Board of Appeal intends to follow through on this intention.   Case background: Spiralled or gathered? T 0439/22 relates to an appeal of the opposition decision ..read more

The IPKat has received and is pleased to host the following guest post by Katfriends Jakob Plesner Mathiasen and Matilde Helene Bom (both Gorrissen Federspiel) on a recent Danish decision tackling the relationship between trade mark law and freedom of expression. Here’s what they write: Can a trademarked mascot drink, smoke, and spray graffiti under the banner of artistic expression? by Jakob Plesner Mathiasen and Matilde Helene Bom Imagine a young girl donning a long white dress with a blue apron. She has neat, blonde hair styled with an impeccable blue bow. She’s carrying her small, yellow ..read more

When an earlier sign consists of two words and the later mark consists of the same two words but in reversed order, the German Federal Patent Court calls this an ‘anagrammatic sound rotation’ (‘anagrammatische Klangrotation’). The rationale is that consumers are unlikely to remember the order of words due to their imperfect recollection (e.g. case 29 W (pat) 47/16). In two recent decisions, the General Court and the Board of Appeal (‘BoA’) of the European Union Intellectual Property Office (‘EUIPO’) found instead that the inversion of words does not lead a likelihood of confusion when the wo ..read more

If you were flat-out last week and didn't have time to follow the IP news, here's the summary of what you missed. Intellectual Property Generally A Kat that has been flat out. Image from Pixabay. This Kat reviewed the new book, The Elgar Companion to Intellectual Property and the Sustainable Development Goals, edited by Bita Amani, Caroline B. Ncube and Matthew Rimmer. The volume brings together 25 excellent contributions to reflect on the role of intellectual property in the progress of the UN Sustainable Development Goals and achieving a better future for everyone.Trade Marks a ..read more

In a recent judgment (in Czech) which is one of the first of its kind in Europe, the Municipal Court of Prague (the Court) held that an image generated by an AI tool was not capable of being protected by copyright, as it was not authored by a natural person.    Background The claimant in this case, which is anonymised in the Court's judgment, had asked the AI program DALL-E to create an image for the claimant's website. DALL-E is a text-to-image model developed by OpenAI to generate digital images from natural language descriptions, called "prompts." The prompt used by the ..read more

This is a review of the book, The Elgar Companion to Intellectual Property and the Sustainable Development Goals, edited by Bita Amani, Caroline B. Ncube and Matthew Rimmer. Nearly a decade after the establishment of the seventeen UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in Agenda 2030, this volume brings together 25 excellent contributions to reflect on the role of intellectual property in the progress of the SDGs. That's not a Kat... but it does care about the environment! This short blog post cannot do justice to all of the chapters in this collection, so the review will instead hig ..read more

As readers may be aware, The IPKat also covers privacy and confidentiality issues and so, is pleased to host the following guest contribution by Katfriend Bibitayo Emmanuel Ojo (DataPro Limited) on the struggles between data privacy rights of citizens and government's duties around national security. This Kat has, elsewhere previously explored the IP connection to technology and national security. Over to Bibitayo: The digital age has ushered in an era of unprecedented data collection and processing. This, while offering undeniable benefits, also raises critical concerns regarding the pro ..read more

Is it an infringement of a person’s own personality/image rights to say that a shoe was designed for that person (and that fact is true)? This, in a nutshell, is the issue that the Italian Supreme Court resolved in a decision published yesterday (ordinanza 9289/2024) further to a dispute between, on the one side, the estate of Audrey Hepburn and, on the other side, Florentine fashion house Salvatore Ferragamo. The shoes in question? Ferragamo’s Audrey, Gondoletta, and Ira. The Supreme Court’s response? Not an infringement. Let’s see in more detail what happened. Background In 2022, the Co ..read more

Rihanna and Puma recently made headlines in invalidity proceedings concerning the following design for ‘shoes’ (Registered Community Design (‘RCD’) no. 003320555-0002): Kevin Bercimuelle-Chamot reported the case here. The short version is that, on 16 December 2014, Rihanna published pictures on her Instagram account wearing shoes that appear to reproduce the design depicted above, such as the following picture: Puma submitted the abovementioned RCD on 26 July 2016. A third party filed an application for a declaration of invalidity against Puma’s RCD alleging that it lacked individual ch ..read more

The IPKat has received and is pleased to host the following guest contribution by Katfriend Desmond Oriakhogba (University of the Western Cape) on one of the important but largely overlooked aspect of South Africa’s Copyright Amendment Bill: provisions aimed at ensuring fair remuneration for South African creators and performers. Here’s what Desmond writes: The Copyright Amendment Bill ensures fair remuneration for South African creators and performers by Desmond O Oriakhogba ...fair compensation needed The Copyright Amendment Bill (CAB) was introduced to parliament on 13 May 2017 ..read more