Never Too Late: if you missed The IPKat last week

 

This Kat's gift to all the Kat moms is an opportunity to not miss anything that the Kats have reported on...

Time to catch up on the IPKat!

PATENTS

In UK patent law, the mere potential for prior public use to have been observed can deprive an invention of novelty. This principle can be a problem for inventors seeking to test prototypes of their inventions and raises the question of how large, mechanical inventions can be tested without creating the potential for the invention to have been observed. The recent case of Claydon v Mzuri is a particularly harsh example of the application of the prior use case law. Rose Hughes reported on this case.

 

COPYRIGHT

We typically talk about distribution of copyright contents in terms of technology, from ink and parchment to digital transmission. But if distribution is about how to get contents to the widest population, then there is an additional factor: how to communicate these contents to a polyglot public. Here, the issue is more cultural and political than technological. Against that background, Neil Wilkof considered the Biblical story of the Tower of Babel and what it can teach us about the streaming of Netflix contents.

 

As IPKat readers will know, a few weeks ago the US Supreme Court delivered its much-awaited judgment in Google v Oracle. The IPKat now hosted an analysis of the ruling by Kat friend Kasper Drazewski.

 

TRADE MARKS

In a mindful decision from earlier this year, the General Court considered that the word ‘heartfulness’ conveys the meaning of a particular relaxation and meditation technique and therefore does not perform its essential function as an indicator of commercial origin for meditation-related goods and services. Nedim Malovic reported on this case.

 

Kat friend Ian Gill reported on how miniscule trademark use may be enough to support a passing off claim and maintain an EU trademark registration.

 

Monopoly may not be quite a favorite in the board gaming community, but the eponymous trade mark decision of last week by the General Court (GC) is sure to become a darling of trade mark professionals. The GC affirmed an important 2019 ruling by the European Union Intellectual Property Office's Second Board of Appeal, finding that repeat filings of earlier trade marks may, in specific circumstances, constitute bad faith. Léon Dijkman reported on the Court’s decision.

 

In an interesting decision earlier this year, the General Court upheld the EUIPO Fifth Board of Appeal’s decision regarding a likelihood of confusion between the Bezos Family Foundation’s application for EU trade mark (EUTM) registration of ‘VROOM’, the name of a global program aimed at facilitating early brain development, and the earlier EUTM ‘POP & VROOM’, owned by SNCF (France’s state-owned rail company). Nedim Malovic reported on this decision.