Publications, press articles, rankings, awards
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02, 2022
The European Council has just indicated on its website that the Protocol to the Agreement on a Unified Patent Court on provisional application (also called PAP) has entered into force yesterday, January 19, 2022. This follows the deposition of the ratification instruments of said protocol by Austria, which was effective January 18, 2022, making
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02, 2022
The EPO’s Rules relating to Fees have been amended by decision of the Administrative Council of 15 December 2021. The amended version of the Rules relating to Fees is applicable as from 1 April 2022. An evaluation of the fee adjustments indicates a general increase of about 2.5% for most fees. Raised fees concern
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02, 2022
The European Patent with unitary effect (“Unified Patent”) will be introduced soon. The final stage of the preparatory work will be accomplished by the end of this summer and the final missing ratification will then be deposited by Germany. In order to give applicants the possibility to obtain Unitary patent protection for EP applications
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01, 2022
Artificial intelligence system called DABUS cannot be named as inventor according to Decisions J 8/20 and J 9/20 of the Board of Appeal of the EPO Legal background Article 81 EPC stipulates that the European patent application shall designate the inventor. Article 60 defines that the right to a European patent shall belong to
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01, 2022
I. Assessment of use with respect to products In our previous review of case law on pharmaceutical trademarks, we examined the differences in practice between the European Union and French courts in identifying the products for which the trademark was in genuine use when considering an application for revocation for non-use. It had been
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12, 2021
The Intellectual Asset Management (IAM) once again initiated a benchmarking survey and let users vote among the world's five largest patent offices for the quality of its patents and services. Again, the EPO has topped the survey this year in both categories like it has ever since this annual survey was started by IAM
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03, 2020
While the Federal Constitutional Court of 20 March 2020 ruled in Germany that the act of consent to the UPC Agreement is not constitutional and therefore void, a press release of 26 March 2020 from the German Federal Minister of Justice clarified the current political will in Germany. In a clear statement, the Federal
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06, 2017
The UPC’s Preparatory Committee released an update (https://www.unified-patent-court.org/news/upc-timetable-update-june-2017 ) yesterday confirming the expected delays for the entry into operation of the UPC Agreement. The Committee confirms that the entry into operation of the UPC will not take place in December 2017 as predicted, due to delays in several countries, especially in England, concerning the finalisation
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05, 2017
According to Article 48(2) of the Agreement on a Unified Patent Court (UPC Agreement), European Patent Attorneys (EPAs) who are entitled to act as a professional representative before the European Patent Office (EPO) pursuant to Article 134 of the European Patent Convention (EPC) may represent parties before the Unified Patent Court (UPC), provided they have
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