The period of gestation for a human being is 9 months. That for an elephant 2 years. For the UPC how long? Not so easy to say. The first big formal effort of creating was the Community Patent Convention of 1975 – a woeful system (rejected by industry twice, at the time and later in […]
Two recent decisions in South Africa and Australia have accepted the fanciful thesis that an AI could be an inventor. I do not intend to comment on these decisions here, I simply want to try to understand how such a far-fetched (and useless) idea could gain so much ground in such a short time. Let’s […]
On 23 April 2020, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) handed down a particularly enlightening decision on the notions of “shape of the product necessary to obtain the technical result” and “shape which gives substantial value to the product” (1). These are grounds for refusal or invalidity of a three-dimensional trade mark, […]
In a decision T 161/18 of 12 May 2020, the EPO Technical Board of Appeals 3.5.05 confirmed the rejection of an application for a neural network, considering the description insufficient in the absence of details of the data used, so that furthermore the neural network did not lead to any technical effect contributing to the […]
The question of damages for malicious prosecution is often raised by our clients, whether they are plaintiffs or defendants in an infringement action. If the infringement action is unsuccessful, if the title invoked is cancelled, does the plaintiff run the risk of being ordered to pay damages for abusive proceedings? For once, we used to […]
Current research for COVID-19 treatments is based on known pharmaceutical active ingredients covered by industrial property titles (patents or supplementary protection certificates). These titles confer to their owner an exclusive right of exploitation on the claimed substances. Consequently, the manufacture by third parties of anti-COVID-19 medicinal products which composition would include protected molecules will require […]
One day I was painting, black had invaded the whole surface of the canvas, without forms, without contrasts, without transparencies. In that extreme, I saw in a way the negation of black. Pierre Soulage understood that, thrust in its extremities, black can be the price of every temptation. Surely Anish Kapoor had his words in […]
The meeting of intellectual property law and enforcement law, i.e. seizures, is surprising. Article R. 241-1 3° of the Code of Civil Enforcement Procedures states that it is the Intellectual Property Code that sets out the rules for seizure of literary, artistic and industrial property rights. However, the Intellectual Property Code does not provide much […]
In France, the first law that protects inventions is from January 7, 1791. It follows a report of our dear knight Stanislas de Boufflers dated December 30, 1790 entitled “Report on incentives and privileges to be granted to inventors of machines and industrial discoveries ” (Parliamentary Archives, 1st Series, XXI, pp. 721-732 [December 30, 1790]). […]
