The Court of Justice has handed down a very significant Opinion in Case Opinion 1/09 on the compatibility with EU law of a draft agreement which aims to set up a new European Patent Court system. We’ve written about that before.

The Court of Justice, the General Court and the Civil Service Tribunal have published a summary of their case statistics for 2010. There's good news and bad news. The good news first: The average time for dealing with cases before the Court…

The Court of Justice has handed down an intriguing judgment in Case C-137/09 Marc Michel Josemans v. Burgemeester van Maastricht about the right to restrict the access of non-residents to places called "coffee shops" which sell dope legally…

One would've never imagine a chocolate bar could be litigated over for many years, but the Kit Kat saga has proven that even the most seemingly mundane things can be worth a tremendous monetary investment. After the EU General Court decision…

The Oracle/Google saga has been wagered in the courts for years (discussed on this blog here and here), and many legal scholars enthusiastic about technology have been waiting for the matter to reach its ultimate conclusion. Although the…

Having looked at the legal intricacies of using protected Geographical Indications in a recent case regarding Champagne, this writer has grown to appreciate the complexities of PDOs and the law surrounding them. What amounts to an…

In this opposition appeal, the Board found that claim 1 of the Main Request, relating to a high strength pearlitic steel rail defined by several ranges of alloying elements, although overlapping with the generic composition of…

This case concerns an appeal by a patent proprietor against a decision of the opposition division revoking his patent on the ground of lack of novelty of claim 1.Claim 1 reads: "A process for producing oxygen to fuel an integrated gasifier…

The application in this appeal case refers to a device using "space energy" for therapeutic purposes and foodstuff preparation. It was refused by the examining division for lack of sufficiency and lack of technical character. The ED further…

Creating a slide show this morning, a task that demands brevity and therefore frequent recourse to abbreviations, I wrote "TMs" for "trade marks". Autocorrect didn't like it, but that was no surprise and I overrode it. Then I wondered whether…

It's now 13 years since Lord Hoffmann told us definitively how to interpret patents claims, in his opinion in Kirin Amgen v Hoechst Marion Roussel [2005] 1 All ER 667. The courts had spent a lot of time pondering how to do what should have…

The news that two Italian brothers have registered what turn out to be two EU trade marks, one for the name Steve Jobs and the other for a logo comprising the name with the letter J, missing a bite-shaped piece like another well-known…

In 2014, the Chinese company Xiaomi, a company specialising in electronics and mobile telephony, filed an application with the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) for registration of the word sign “MI PAD” as an EU…

In examining whether registration ought to be refused on the ground that that shape involved a technical solution, EUIPO and the General Court should also have taken into account non-visible functional elements represented by that shape, such…

The International Court of Arbitration of the International Chamber of Commerce (the ICC Court) has announced important amendments to the ICC Rules of Arbitration (the Rules) with the aim of further increasing the efficiency and transparency…