One of the topics hotly discussed within the intellectual property family over the last few years is whether or not “transit” is an act of infringement. Since, unlike patent law, trademark law is already harmonised at the EU level, many cases have reached the ECJ, which has generated a saga of judgments that does not appear to have satisfied anybody. In response to the criticism attracted by the last judgment of this saga (judgment dated 1 December 2011 in joined cases C-446/09 (Philips) and C-495/09 (Nokia), the European Commission has decided to include “transit” among the acts that the trademark owner is entitled to prohibit.
In particular, in its “Proposal for a Regulation of the Europea [...]
Spain adopted the optional clause in Article 65 of the EPC, which requires a translation of the patent filed with the national patent office within 3 months of publication of the patent by EPO. The Supreme Court decided that this term starts on the date of publication of the announcement of the granting of the patent by EPO.
A summary of this case will be posted on http://www.Kluweriplaw.com
[...]The complexities of European patent architecture raise a number of issues relating to the interface between opposition proceedings before the European Patent Office (“EPO”) and infringement proceedings before national courts. A recent case has raised one of such issues, namely: what the impact should be of the revocation of the patent by the EPO in an ongoing infringement action before the national courts.
The debate was sparked by Article 22 of the Spanish Civil Procedure Act, which states that legal proceedings may be terminated without making a decision on costs when there is a supervening loss of object (i.e. the subject matter of the case ceases to exist).
In the case before the Sp [...]
On 11 December 2012 Advocate General Yves Bot delivered his conclusions on the complaints brought by Italy and Spain against the Coucil’s decision to proceed through enhanced cooperation to the adoption of the unitary patent regulation, and proposed the CJEU to reject the complaints.
As many will remember, the discussions on the adoption of the unitary patent regulation took the turn of enhanced cooperation (a procedure contemplated by the Treaties whereby a limited group of Member States proceed to the adoption of a specific piece of legislation which will eventually have effect only in their territories, and not in those of the non participating Member States) when it became apparent tha [...]
As in some other jurisdictions, under Spanish law so-called “mini-inventions” may be protected by a utility model (called “petty” patents in some countries). The two main differences between a patent and a Spanish utility model are: (i) in the case of utility models, the state of the art includes everything “divulged” in Spain before the priority date, whereas in the case of patents it includes everything “accessible to the public” in Spain before said date; (ii) a utility model meets the inventive activity requirement if the invention “is not very evident” to the person skilled in the art, whereas for patents the law uses the “evident” (as opposed to “very evident”) requirement. If one may [...]
“It’s the same thing night on night / Who’s wrong baby who’s right / Another fight and I slam the door on / Another battle in our dirty little war / When I look at myself I don’t see the man I wanted to be / Somewhere along the line I slipped off the track / I’m caught movin’ one step up and two steps back.”
The lyrics of “One Step Up”, by Bruce Springsteen, very nicely illustrate the effect that Directive 2004/48 (the so-called “Enforcement Directive”) had on the legal protection of intellectual property owners in Spain. It caused them to go one step up and two steps back, as shown by the Decision of 13 December of 2012 from Commercial Court number 1 of Barcelona. As the reader will see [...]
