Never too Late: If you missed the IPKat last weeks!

Summer is not over yet and the IPKat has been pretty busy! In case you missed it, here is an overview of the posts from the last few weeks.

"Geisha i hand" by Mikael Moiner is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

TRADE MARKS

Last July, the Beijing IP Court ruled that the trade mark application no. 52242572 “THE QUIXIA APPLE BRANDY” for brandy in class 33 is not eligible for trade mark protection since it is a deceptive sign. GuestKat Tian Lu discussed background of the case and provided a comment on the outcome of the decision and the assessment of deceptiveness of marks in light with the Trade Mark Law of China (TMLC) (see here).

GuestKat Hayleigh Bosher reported on the case of the company Fizzy Foam, a trade mark owner that surrendered some of its registered marks, even though they were accepted by the UKIPO after receiving reactions on the Internet and a petition against their registrations (see here).

GuestKat Nedim Malovic reported and commented on the background and reasoning of the Second Board of Appeal's decision in Case R 503/2021-2 (Speculative Product Design LLC v. EUIPO), in which a 3D EUTM application by Samsonite for tablet cases in class 9 was refused for registration due to lack of distinctiveness (see here).

Katfriend Anna Maria Stein reported on two recent decisions of the Italian Supreme Court on the protection of "Made in Italy" as an indication of origin of products (see here).

PATENTS

It is an international requirement that DNA, RNA, and protein sequences disclosed in a patent application be included in sequence listings used by patent offices to search the prior art. GuestKat Rose Hughes reported on the EPO's recent approach to the sequence listing ST. 25, which has been replaced by the new ST. 26 (which raised concerns from EPI - and EPO's response to it), and provided analysis and thoughts on this (see here and here).

GuestKat Hayleigh Bosher reported on the UK government's publication of responses to the call for views on Standard Essential Patents (SEP) that took place between December 2021 and March 2022 (see here).

GuestKat Rose Hughes also reported on a recent EPO Boards of Appeals decision (T-682/22) that seems to clarify the self-contradictory stipulations in the Guidelines for Examination on interlocutory revision (see here).

According to recent decisions of the EPO Boards of Appeal, we are still in a general state of emergency due to the COVID -19 pandemic, which justifies the ViCo conducting oral proceedings without the consent of all parties. Background and analysis on this is provided by our GuestKat Rose Hughes (see here).

DESIGN

GuestKat Jan Jacobi reported on the UK Government's response to the consultation on design law, as a result of which the government announced that it had joined the Global Brands Database provided by WIPO. In addition, the UK Government responded to the call for views on design, which ran from January to March 2022 (see here).

COPYRIGHT

There was a discussion about the royalties of the song "Milkshake" by Kelis (produced by Chad Hugo and Pharrell Williams), which led Beyoncé to remove a sample of the song from her recent work "Energy" (on her latest album "Renaissance"). Our GuestKat Hayleigh Bosher commented on the news and took the opportunity to provide an overview of the two rights associated with a musical composition: the actual sound recording and the musical work that the composition represents, and their implications for sample licensing (from the producer's perspective, which is not that of the performer) (see here).

GuestKat Hayleigh Bosher reviewed the book: “Copyright in the Digital Single Market: Article-by-Article Commentary to the Provisions of Directive 2019/790”, by our PermaKat - Professor Eleonora Rosati! (see here).

Our GuestKat Chijioke Okorie reported on the recent recommendation issued by the Kenya Copyright Board (KECOBO) entitled "Advisory on memes and copyright law," which analysed the phenomenon of memes in light of Kenya's Copyright Act (see here).