Around the IP Blogs

The year has barely begun, and another period of Mercury retrograde is already upon us. Take shelter in this post and check what was published last week around the IP blogs.

A Kat being extra careful while Mercury is retrograde

Copyright

SpicyIP analysed a recent decision from the Bombay High Court, in which it was decided that ideas cannot be copyrighted but can be protected through the application of confidentiality law. 

Patents

The IPWatchdog posted an article about the changing risks – in the economic and legal sense – over time and the implications of these changes for patent licensing dynamics.

PatentlyO compiled last year’s data from the Federal Circuit in a comprehensive analysis with graphics comparing the types of decisions and the evolution of the analysed data from the past decade.

Since the pandemic started, 5,070 global patent applications have been published. The Patent Lawyer Magazine blog commented on this milestone as it points out a surge in innovation. 

Trade Marks

The Kluwer Trade Mark Blog published a summary of (i) a recent Intellectual Property Enterprise Court (IPEC) decision that reiterated and applied key principles in the law of passing off (that also applies to unregistered rights) and (ii) a decision of the Danish Maritime and Commercial High Court involving the likelihood of confusion between Kejser Sausage ApS (‘Kejser Sausage’) and Keyser KBH ApS among others (this case was also analysed by our Katfriends Jakob Plesner Mathiasen and Hanne Kirk) 

The blog Class 46 by Marques announced that Jamaica joined the Madrid Protocol on 27 December 2021 and the declarations contained in the instrument of accession. Jamaica is the 110th Member State to join the Madrid Protocol.

The TTABlog commented on a recent decision of the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board of the USPTO, in which the registration of the mark POTIFY, for clothing and for software and services related to medical marijuana dispensaries, was denied on the ground of likelihood of dilution by blurring of the famous, registered mark SPOTIFY for downloadable software and online services.

Miscellaneous

IPTango discussed a recent transparency report published by Mercado Libre, divided into four main topics: user information requests (section one), product security and quality (section two), protection of IP rights (section three), and privacy matters (section four).