Never Too Late: if you missed the IPKat last week

Louis, the prince

Patent 

The UK Supreme Court’s decision in Unwired Planet made it to the IPKat’s front page, with two dedicated posts. On the day of the ruling, GuestKat Leon Dijkman provided an overview of the ruling, outlining its main issues, including the fact that the UKSC has confirmed that English courts have jurisdiction to set global FRAND rates. Later that week, Katfriend Roya Ghafele offered some of her observations on this landmark case, looking at the Court’s arguments on the forum non conveniens doctrine from a historical perspective. 

Katfriends Barbara Mooij and Alexander de Leeuw prepared an extensive case law review, for our readers to keep up with Dutch patent litigation. The most noticeable patent cases, as highlighted by the authors, concern inter alia the questions of compensation of litigation costs, balance of interests in SEP preliminary injunction proceedings and FRAND defence, balance of interest in access proceedings, and ongoing proceedings at the Dutch Supreme Court. 

Copyright 

SpecialKat Tian Lu highlighted the main conclusions from the Notice on the Trial of Short Video Copyright Cases, released last month by the Beijing IP Court. The Notice, based on the Court’s jurisprudence in 45 short video-related cases, summarizes the approach to questions such as types of infringements, subject of infringement and fair use. 

GuestKat Thomas Key discussed the ruling, issued by the US Second Circuit Court of Appeals in 50 cent v. Rick Ross. The dispute, which arose in connection with the sampling, by Rick Ross, of a song by 50 cent, involves the issue of preemption of the state right of publicity by federal copyright law, as well as the legality of sampling, a question also relevant in European case law. 

Trade marks 

GuestKat Thomas Key also looked into a ruling by the US Courts of Appeals D. C. Circuit in Imapizza LLC v. At Pizza Limited. The case concerns two pizza companies, US-based &pizza and UK-based @pizza, and involves questions of international copyright and trade mark law, as well as trespass. 

In Rat Pack v. RatPac, the German Bundesgerichtshof addressed a sensitive issue in trade mark procedural law: in which cases can a judge be considered part of relevant public, in order to himself/herself evaluate the risk of confusion between two signs? GuestKat Peter Ling shared his analysis of this recent case, in which the German Federal Court of Justice found that judges of the lower court are not part of relevant public, required special knowledge to proceed with the evaluation and should have relied on external evidence showing the understanding of the relevant public. 

Other 

The UK’s Patent Examination Board (PEB) released the final version of FAQ’s for the UK patent exams. Rose Hughes summed up here and here the PEB’s main guidelines, including the information on designated contacts and on the form of the question paper. 

Inspired by a recent Toyota commercial, which invites buyers to purchase original replacement parts for their cars, Neil Wilkof reflected on the phenomenon of free-riding as a win-win situation for all competitors in a given market. 

Katfriend Dinusha Mendis summarised a recent study on “The Intellectual Property Implications of the Development of Industrial 3D Printing”, which she and her team of experts prepared for the European Commission. Prof. Mendis outlined the main scenarios where 3D printing might enter into conflict with intellectual property rights, including design rights, database rights and trade secrets. The authors also provided a series of conclusions and recommendations as to which areas of law need further clarifications in light of 3D printing developments. 

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