As of December 1st, 2023, Brazil is leading G20, wherein one of the three priorities to be addressed is tackling climate change, with a focus on energy transition, in addition to promoting sustainable development in its economic, social and environmental dimensions[1]. At this same date, the BRPTO launched a new commission, namely: sustainability and biotechnology…
The European Parliament supports the introduction of a full ban on patents for all plants produced by certain New Genomic Techniques (NGT), plant material, parts thereof, genetic information and process features they contain. The ban, part of a proposal to introduce two different categories of NGT plants, got support in a vote today. The provision…
On 20 December 2023, the UK Supreme Court handed down its highly anticipated judgment in the case of Thaler v Comptroller-General of Patents, Designs and Trademarks [2023] UKSC 49, unanimously ruling that only a natural person can be named as an inventor on a patent application. In doing so, the Supreme Court upheld the decisions…
Nokia has started legal actions against Amazon in the US, Germany, India, the UK and at the Unified Patent Court for the unauthorized use of Nokia’s video-related technologies in streaming services and devices. Separately, Nokia filed cases in the US against HP. In a blogpost, Arvin Patel, chief licensing officer new segments at Nokia, states…
Introduction On 17 July 2023, the English Court of Appeal handed down its decision in a dispute between J.C. Bamford (JCB) and Manitou about the confidentiality of information disclosed in the course of litigation between JCB and Manitou relating to the validity and infringement of certain of JCB’s patents. At the heart of the confidentiality…
In certain technological fields, it is necessary to choose a solution and adopt it as a standard. Imagine, for example, if each electronic device came with a different socket-outlet format or if each airport in the world used a different communication system to connect its control tower with airplanes. It would be catastrophic or, at…
On 27 January 2022, the Spanish Supreme Court handed down a very interesting judgment dealing with a dispute surrounding the ownership of a patent application that claims a system to produce domestic hot and cold water. Judgments dealing with patent ownership are very scarce in Spain. Hence the interest of this case, the background to…
After the disruption brought on by the pandemic, it seems that this year the Mobile Word Congress (“MWC”), the largest mobile trade event in the world and one of the most significant trade fairs held in Barcelona, will take place from 28 February to 3 March 2022 under normal conditions. Against this background, on 10…
Although a silent technological revolution is currently taking place in the tobacco industry, there is no publicly available data on patents that read on tobacco harm-reduction technologies. We recently conducted a patent analysis and found that, in the developing world, there are only few patents filed relating to tobacco harm reduction. This stands in stark…
