Around the IP Blogs

The IPKat was feeling naughty and opened a few IP stories under the Christmas tree early. Enjoy!

Trade Marks

Businesses often resort to placing keywords in the html code of a web page as meta tags, or in contextual advertising templates for promoting their products on the internet. Recently, in a case before the Arbitration Court of the Stavropol region in Russia, the defendant succeeded in proving that there was no infringement when a trademark, which was similar to another mark, had been included in an advertisement by a web service. In the appeal, the Supreme Court reaffirmed that keywords that are automatically generated in a search system does not constitute infringement under Russian intellectual property law. IPWatchdog has the details.

As an early Christmas present, IPTango reports that the Peruvian Instituto Nacional de Defensa de la Competencia y de la Proteccion de la Propiedad Intelectual (INDECOPI) has granted 164 collective marks to associations located in the Region of San Martin. Here is the full list (in Spanish).

Patents

Back in May, the Business Growth and Transformation Law (the so-called “PACTE Law”), inter alia, introduced new opposition proceedings against French patents before the French PTO. A draft amendment to the Intellectual Property Code is currently under consideration: it will aim to “allow third parties to request by administrative means the revocation or amendment of a patent while ensuring that abusive opposition proceedings are prevented”. Francois Pochart, Thierry Lautier and Lionel Martin, in Kluwer Patent Blog, ask readers to get ready for action because the order will be issued early next year.

Luis Fernández-Novoa, in EULAW blog, informs readers of the Commercial Courts of Barcelona’s issuance of a Protocol of Trade Secrets Protection in light of the recent approval of the law on Trade Secrets, which entered into force in March 13th, 2019, and which transposes the Directive on the protection of undisclosed know-how and business information (trade secrets).

Enjoy the Christmas Gifts! 

Copyright

The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case of Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org, Inc.. The issue is whether annotations of the Georgia State Code, provided by Lexis Nexis, a private company, is copyrightable. In Patently-O blog, you can read Dennis Crouch’s summary of the arguments and listen to the full oral arguments here.

In the Kluwer Copyright Blog, Melinda Rucz reports the judgment of the Paris Court of First Instance in the dispute between UFC-Que Choisir (“UFC”), a consumer organisation, and a videogame distribution platform operated by Valve. Among other issues, the court was asked to decide whether subscribers to Valve’s platform should be allowed to resell videogames purchased digitally. The court answered in the affirmative, finding the principle of exhaustion to be applicable to such cases. 

In the SpicyIP blog, Divij Joshi reports on the liability of an online platform in India. In Google India Pvt. Ltd. vs M/s Visakha Industries, the Supreme Court of India denied quashing defamation proceedings against Google for its failure to expeditiously remove allegedly defamatory material from its ‘Google Group’ service.

Money

Are you a business owner sitting on some valuable intellectual property that is not adding to your company's asset value? What are you waiting for? Head over to IP Finance to find out how to make it rain.