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June 13, 2025
Baby-Clothes Maker Fights Amazon Ban In Bike Design Row
A baby-clothes maker has sued a homewares retailer for getting one of its Amazon product listings struck off the site, arguing that it didn't infringe the retailer's registered design because the bike accessory concept wasn't new.Â
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June 13, 2025
UPC To Roll Out New Case Management System In 2 Stages
The Unified Patent Court has said that it will roll out its new case management system in two stages, explaining that lawyers will have to continue using the existing system to file cases and applications until September.
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June 13, 2025
LG Secures Patent For Video Compressing Device
South Korean tech conglomerate LG Electronics has swayed officials at the European Patent Office to overturn a decision refusing its patent for a video compression technique aimed at reducing memory use and processing demands.
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June 13, 2025
UK Litigation Roundup: Here's What You Missed In London
This past week in London has seen Tottenham Hotspur FC kick off against Manchester United co-owner Ineos Automotive following a soured sponsorship deal, Acer and Nokia clash over patents for video coding technology, and two investors reignite litigation against the founders of an AI exercise bike business that unlawfully pocketed $1.2 million in investments to fund their own lifestyles. Here, Law360 looks at these and other new claims in the U.K.
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June 13, 2025
American Furniture Brand Can TM 'Furnico' Despite 'Furneco'
A furniture maker has won its bid to register "Furnico" as a trademark despite a rival U.K. company having already registered "Furneco," after British officials ruled that its presence on the U.S. market for almost 20 years gave it a leg up.Â
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June 13, 2025
Philip Morris Loses Bid To Invalidate E-Cigarette Patent
A subsidiary of the tobacco company behind Golden Virginia and Rizla has held on to its electronic smoking device patent at a European appellate board, snubbing opposition by Philip Morris.
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June 12, 2025
Anti-Piracy Firm Founder Denies Undermining Company
The founder of an anti-piracy technology company has pushed back on claims that he made disparaging comments about the business to clients and misused its confidential information when he departed.
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June 12, 2025
Google Beats Media Co.'s Fresh Appeal For 'Shorts' TM
Google LLC has fended off a London media company's appeal against an earlier decision to partially cancel its "Shorts" trademark, marking the latest chapter in a years-long trademark tussle over the rights to the word in the world of short-form video.
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June 12, 2025
Christian Group Can't Register 'He Gets Us' As EU TMÂ
A U.S. evangelical Christian group can't register as a European trademark the Jesus-focused "He Gets Us" slogan popularized by the group's Super Bowl ads because European officials found this week that consumers would understand it described the organization's religious promotional services.Â
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June 12, 2025
Pet Clothes Biz Says Rival Copied Medical Shirt Design
A Dutch company that makes shirts for pets to wear after treatment has launched legal proceedings against a U.K. rival for allegedly infringing its copyright by selling a range of shirts "highly similar" to its own pet recovery garments.
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June 11, 2025
Coinbase Loses 'Bad Faith' TM Clash With Rival At EU Court
A European Union court tossed Coinbase's latest attempt to void a Japanese crypto exchange's "coinbase" trademark on Wednesday, ruling there was no proof the company acted in bad faith by registering the mark.
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June 11, 2025
Carlsberg, Heineken Must Face Attacks On Barley Drink Patent
European officials will have to reconsider a patent for a barley-based beverage owned by Carlsberg and Heineken, after an appeals board ruled that a decision rejecting oppositions to the invention suffered from "fundamental deficiencies."
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June 11, 2025
Sherwin-Williams Lays Farrow & Ball 'Dead Flat' TM To Rest
Luxury paint company Farrow & Ball has lost its trademark "dead flat" after a U.S. rival convinced U.K. trademark officials that the mark is merely an industry-standard description of a type of paint finish.
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June 11, 2025
Baklava Biz Denies Trying To Pass As Established Coffee Co.
A London dessert shop has denied claims that it copied the trademarks of a 150-year-old Turkish coffee brand to mislead consumers into buying baklavas and other regional treats.Â
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June 11, 2025
McDonald's Wins Big Mac TM Battle With Irish Fast Food Biz
McDonald's has persuaded European Union officials to block two trademark applications from Supermac's, an Irish fast food chain, leaving its opponent in a pickle after proving there was a risk of confusion with its "Big Mac" branding.
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June 11, 2025
EasyGroup Keeps 'EasyPod' UK TM Hopes Alive
Value brand company easyGroup has fought off an attempt to block its "easyPod" trademark application in the U.K., convincing officials that consumers will not confuse the sign with a storage company's "Pods" brand.
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June 10, 2025
Stability AI Chides Getty's 'Cynical' Bid To Find Infringing Pics
Stability AI, the makers of generative AI model Stable Diffusion, fired back Tuesday at claims that it had infringed Getty Images'Â intellectual property, claiming that Getty has failed to point to any instances of real world infringement.Â
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June 10, 2025
MPs Shun Peers' AI Copyright Transparency Pleas Once More
MPs voted again on Tuesday to reject an amendment from peers to a pending bill that would require artificial intelligence developers to be transparent about the copyrighted material they use to develop their models.
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June 10, 2025
IBM Seeks £1.6M After Winning Reverse-Engineering Claim
IBM has said that LzLabs must pay over £1.6 million ($2.2 million) in damages for reverse-engineering its software products in order to build a rival platform, adding to the Swiss company's £20 million bill.
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June 10, 2025
Nokia Loses Patent For 5G-Segmentation Method
European appellate officials refused to grant Nokia a patent for a system to improve network transmissions, ruling that a previous system already revealed its key method for breaking down large data packets into smaller segments.
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June 10, 2025
Gene-Editing Biotech Says Rivals Infringed CRISPR Patent
A Korean biotech company has accused several companies of infringing its CRISPR gene-editing patent in the U.K., telling a London court that they must enter a license to use the technology.
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June 09, 2025
Australian Beauty Biz Can't Register 'XTendlash' Mascara TM
A cosmetics company based in Sydney, Australia, has lost its attempt to register the trademark "Xtendlash" for mascara, after European trademark officials found that "extend" and "lash" was a direct description of the purpose of the eye makeup product.
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June 09, 2025
Researcher Can't Get UK Patent For Colon Cancer Treatment
U.K. intellectual property officials have rejected a researcher's application for a patent covering a colon cancer treatment, ruling that it isn't sufficiently new over one of her own earlier publications.
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June 09, 2025
Orange Loses TM Protections For Physical Products
French telecoms giant Orange has lost some of the rights covered by its "Orange" trademarks after U.K. officials agreed with a Romanian businessman that the signs for physical goods could literally describe the products as having an orange color.
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June 09, 2025
Getty's 'Day Of Reckoning' Begins As Stability AI Trial Opens
Getty Images opened its landmark copyright infringement case against Stability AI Monday by accusing the technology company of building its generative AI model on millions of images with "complete indifference" for underlying intellectual property protections.
Expert Analysis
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Series
Children's Book Writing Makes Me A Better Lawyer
Becoming a children's book author has opened doors to incredible new experiences of which I barely dared to dream, but the process has also changed my life by serving as a reminder that strong writing, networking and public speaking skills are hugely beneficial to a legal career, says Shaunna Bailey at Sheppard Mullin.
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How The PTAB Landscape Shifted In 2023
Attorneys at Finnegan consider the impact of noteworthy Patent Trial and Appeal Board developments in 2023, including rulemaking, litigation, precedential decisions and director reviews that affected PTAB practice, and offer a reference for examining future proceedings and strategies.
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How 'Copyleft' Licenses May Affect Generative AI Output
Open-source software and the copyleft licenses that support it, whereby derivative works must be made available for others to use and modify, have been a boon to the development of artificial intelligence, but could lead to issues for coders who use AI to help write code and may find their resulting work exposed, says William Dearn at HLK.
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UPC Decision Highlights Key Security Costs Questions
While the Unified Patent Court recently ordered NanoString to pay €300,000 as security for Harvard's legal costs in a revocation action dispute, the decision highlights that the outcome of a security for costs application will be highly fact-dependent and that respondents should prepare to set out their financial position in detail, says Tom Brazier at EIP.
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IP Ruling Could Pave Way For AI Patents In UK
If implemented by the U.K. ÃÛÌÒÊÓÆµ Office, the High Court's recent ruling in Emotional Perception AI v. Comptroller-General of Patents, holding that artificial neural networks can be patented, could be a first step to welcoming AI patents in the U.K., say Arnie Francis and Alexandra Brodie at Gowling.
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Why It's Urgent For Pharma Cos. To Halt Counterfeit Meds
With over 10.5 million counterfeit medicines seized in the EU in 2023, it is vital both ethically and commercially that pharmaceutical companies take steps to protect against such infringements, including by invoking intellectual property rights protection, says Lars Karnøe at Potter Clarkson.
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Examining US And Europe Patent Disclosure For AI Inventions
As applicants before the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and the European Patent Office increasingly seek patent protection for inventions relating to artificial intelligence, the applications may require more implementation details than traditional computer-implemented inventions, including disclosure of data and methods used to train the AI systems, say attorneys at Finnegan.
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Incontinence Drug Ruling Offers Key Patent Drafting Lessons
In a long-awaited decision in Astellas v. Teva and Sandoz, an English court found that the patent for a drug used to treat overactive bladder syndrome had not been infringed, highlighting the interaction between patent drafting and litigation strategy, and why claim infringement is as important a consideration as validity, says George McCubbin at Herbert Smith.
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EPO Decision Significantly Relaxes Patent Priority Approach
In a welcome development for patent applicants, a recent European Patent Office decision redefines the way that entitlement to priority is assessed, significantly relaxing the previous approach and making challenges to the right to priority in post-grant opposition proceedings far more difficult, say lawyers at Finnegan.
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Why US Should Help European Efforts To Fix SEP Licensing
The European Commission's proposed reform of standard-essential patent licensing aims to fix a fundamental problem stemming from the asymmetry and obscurity of information about SEPs, and U.S. agencies exploring regulation of foreign regimes should support and improve these efforts, say David McAdams at Duke University and David Katz at WilmerHale.
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Shifting From Technical To Clear Insurance Contract Wordings
Recent developments on insurance policies, including the Financial Conduct Authority's new consumer duty, represent a major shift for insurers and highlight the importance of drafting policies that actively improve understanding, rather than shift the onus onto the end user, say Tamsin Hyland and Jonathan Charwat at RPC.
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What's In The Plan To Boost Germany's Commercial Litigation
Lawyers at Cleary discuss Germany's recent draft bill, which establishes commercial courts and introduces English as a court language in civil proceedings, and analyze whether it accomplishes the country's goal of becoming a more attractive venue for commercial litigation.
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Bitcoin Case Highlights Advanced Age Of UK's IP Law
An appellate court's recent decision in a case involving the copyright of bitcoin's file format emphasizes the role of copyright protection in software, and also the challenges of applying decades-old laws to new technologies, say Marianna Foerg and Ben Bell at Potter Clarkson.
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Future Paths For AI Inventorship After Justices' Thaler Denial
Anup Iyer at Moore & Van Allen examines the current and future state of AI inventorship in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision not to hear Thaler v. Vidal, including collaboration, international challenges, and the need for closer examination in research and development-intensive sectors.
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EU Ruling Highlights Strategic Benefits Of Patent Appeals
The European Patent Office board of appeal recently reversed the examining board's ruling in an application by LG Electronics, highlighting how applicants struggling to escape conflicting objection traps at the examination level can improve their chances of a positive outcome with an appeal, says Andrew Rudhall at Haseltine Lake.