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…

The Commission brought an action before the Court of Justice against the Czech Republic for failure to fulfil obligations, on the ground that the Czech Republic refuses to recognise the hallmarks for precious metals affixed by…

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…

When analysing inventive activity, one risk that appears to be here to stay is that of hindsight. As Richard Ebbink very aptly put it in a workshop held at the INGRES Institute in Zurich on 8 and 9 September 2017 in honour of Dr. Dieter…

In the first period of functioning of the Unified Patent Court, the judge-rapporteur – who has important powers in the new system – should as much as possible revert issues to the panel of judges as a whole. This is beneficial for…

In its research concerning the complaint that was filed against ratification of the Unified Patent Court Agreement, the German Federal Constitutional Court (FCC) gave a series of mainly German institutions and associations the…

A full summary of this case has been published on Kluwer IP Law and the case has been discussed on the Kluwer Copyright Blog here. The CJEU held that Article 2(a) and Article 3(1) of Directive 2001/29 preclude national legislation that…

Legal enforcement of open source software license violations, in particular violations of the General Public License (GPL), has been established in Germany for quite some time. Back in 2004, the Regional Court of Munich I granted an…

Over the course of the last couple of months, we witnessed an outburst of creativity concerning the wording of Art 13 of the Digital Single Market Directive (‘the Directive’). Last week, the Estonian Presidency tabled a compromise…

Update: Die Bundesanstalt für Finanzdienstleistungsaufsicht stellt Nachforschungen hinsichtlich Recyclix an. Wie mir aus zuverlässiger Quelle mitgeteilt wurde, hat die BaFin mittlerweile begonnen, in der Sache „Recyclix“…

Der Smart Contract wird aktuell als bahnbrechende Fortentwicklung des Rechtssystems gehandelt. Die genaue Betrachtung ist jedoch ernüchternd. Vielfach fehlt es an Rechtswirksamkeit des Smart Contract selbst. Neben dieser und anderer…

Ihre persönlichen Daten sollten so gut wie möglich geschützt sein. Daher finden Sie hier nicht mehr die üblichen Social-Media Buttons, sondern die Lösung über „Shariff“. Denn die üblichen…