Never Too Late: if you missed The IPKat last week

Patents

A South African decision to recognize an artificial Intelligence system (DABUS) as an inventor was one of most discussed IP news items of the last several weeks [see The IPKat’s posts on the DABUS saga in various jurisdictions here, here, and here]. Our SpecialKat Chijioke Okorie published an instructive post on South Africa’s patent laws and how the absence of a definition for ‘inventor’ enabled South African authorities to register the DABUS patent.

Katfriend Konstantin Voropaev analysed a patent trolling case from Kazakhstan, where a local patent troll threatened the market of taxi aggregators (platforms, where passengers connect with drivers). Basing itself on a registered utility model for an “Automated Taxi Ordering System”, the company in question tried to block its competitors from the market.

Copyright

PermaKat Eleonora Rosati shared her analysis of the judgment in VG Bild-Kunst (C-392/12), issued by the Court of Justice earlier this year [see also an earlier post by Eleonora on the same topic here]. In this judgment, the Court has (once again) interpreted the concept of ‘communication to the public’ under the InfoSoc Directive.

Trade marks

The SkyKick legal saga continues [earlier instalments discussed by The IPKat here]. Former GuestKat Darren Meale discussed the judgment, rendered by the Court of Appeal of England and Wales, in the trade mark battle between SkyKick and Sky. The judgment revolves around the issue of bad faith in UK trade mark law, and whether Sky acted in bad faith in applying for its trade marks.

GuestKat Nedim Malovic considered a recent decision by the General Court in case T-501/20. There, the General Court found that ‘PANTA RHEI’ could not be registered for goods in Class 5, due to the likelihood of confusion with an earlier EU trade mark ‘PANTA RHEI’, registered for goods and services in class 3, 35, and 44.

Other

Emeritus Katonomist Nicola Searle and her colleague Andy Vivian discussed the relevance of trade secrets in the stock markets. Using econometric research tools, the authors looked into whether the announcement of a trade secret theft had any impact on the company’s stock price (and their research seems to show that the stock market does not care about trade secrets).

This InternKat reviewed ‘The Transformation of EU Geographical Indications Law’ by A. Zappalaglio. The book discusses the roots of the origin link (that is, a connection between a given product and the geographical area, from which it originates) in the EU GI laws, as well as its current application.