According to the Council Regulation (EC) No 6/2002 on Community designs (CDR), you can protect a design without registering it. But here is the catch: the unregistered design must be new and have an “individual character”. So, what is individual character? A recent court case gives insight. It specifically addresses the fashion industry, but the ideas are useful for any company that does not register all of its designs ...
Although data protection laws globally are converging around a set of shared concerns, there is little prospect of their being harmonised. Ultimately, data protection and data privacy issues are rooted in local culture, and evolve in response to specific local challenges. In Europe, our data protection laws were a strong reaction against secret reporting by the state on its citizens that was widespread after the Second World War ...
As more states adopt anti-SLAPP legislation (i.e., Oklahoma’s passage this Spring and Nevada’s expansion of its anti-SLAPP statute last year), more federal courts must decide whether such laws create a substantive right which should be applied by the federal judiciary ...
The Supreme Court today ruled that Aereo’s system for transmitting over-the-air television broadcasts through the Internet violates copyright law. In a 6-3 decision, with Justice Breyer writing for the majority, the Court ruled that Aereo both “performs” the television broadcasts at issue and does so “publicly.” With these key issues decided, the Court essentially sounded a death knell for Aereo and a similar but unrelated company, FilmOn X ...
Browsing the internet – even in a commercial context – does not require authorisation from the relevant copyright owners, says the EU’s top court. The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) confirmed in its recent judgment in Public Relations Consultants Association Ltd (PRCA) v Newspaper Licensing Agency Ltd (NLA) and Others (Case C-360/13) that browsing the internet without a copyright owner’s authorisation does not infringe the owner’s copyright ...
The technology to “print” three dimensional objects with a 3D printer is not new, but as prices for the technology fall it becomes more readily available for private individuals. The possibilities that open up when individuals get access to 3D printers trigger the imagination, but the accompanying issues are not without complications. The technology, and the new areas of use to which it is put, also raises many questions, particularly regarding intellectual property rights ...
On June 2nd, 2014, President Michelle Bachelet entered a bill into Congress which seeks to modify Law N° 19.496 on the Protection of the Rights of Consumers (“CPA”). The message of the bill recognizes that the tools provided by the current legislation to address violations to the rights of consumers are not sufficiently efficient or dissuasive: in several cases it is less expensive for providers to pay a fine for breach of the CPA, than to comply with such regulation ...
New regulations that ban businesses from imposing excessive fees on consumers making payments will extend to small businesses from 12 June 2014. The Consumer Rights (Payment Surcharges) Regulations 2012 (the 'regulations') - the first of many legislative changes that form part of the major ongoing overhaul of consumer protection legislation - came into force for most businesses on 6 April 2013 ...
After two years of heated debate fuelled by a diplomatic scandal with the US, Brazil has enacted a groundbreaking bill of internet rights which will protect consumers and give added certainty to businesses. The government initially sought to stem the controversy related to the US government spying on Brazilian internet by proposing rules which would require all companies with operations in Brazil to keep their data stored within the country by setting up local servers ...
In Nautilus, Inc. v. Biosig Instruments, Inc., issued on June 2, 2014, the Supreme Court established a new legal test to determine whether a patent claim satisfies the definiteness requirement of 35 U.S.C. Section 112 ...
At the turn of the 21st century, various high-ranking Federal Trade Commission (FTC) officials stated that the Federal Trade Commission Act does not create requirements for what data-security measures companies must enact to ensure that private information is protected. The FTC Act’s catch-all prohibition against “unfair” or “deceptive” acts or practices, 15 U.S.C. § 45(a), was not believed to cover the data-breach and cyber security domain ...
International infringers are notoriously difficult litigants to get in touch with; all too often the methods of service routinely available in the United States to serve defendants and bring them into court to halt infringement fail when exported overseas. The defendants in these cases often have little incentive to cooperate with either the court or whatever physical mechanism or service might be available in their jurisdiction ...
With international marketers readying for the upcoming FIFA World Cup, the Global Advertising Lawyers Alliance (GALA) has released Ambush Marketing: A Global Legal Perspective, which summarizes laws and other rules governing ambush marketing in 52 countries around the world ...
If you like having options in obtaining patent rights faster, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) has been eager to please in the last decade. Expediting a patent application can be highly desirable since the average pendency from filing to issuance is about three years on average, and can be even longer in certain technology areas or if an appeal to the Patent Trial & Appeal Board is required ...
Our clients from outside the province of Quebec often ask us the following questions: what are the linguistic labelling requirements in Canada, and particularly Quebec? There are several statutes and regulations governing labelling in Quebec and Canada. The following is a summary of some of the major points relating to the use of the French language ...
In a surprise announcement on 21 March 2014, the Zambian government with immediate effect abolished exchange control regulations introduced in 2012 and 2013 in an attempt to halt the rapid devaluation of the Kwacha. When the Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD) came to power in Zambia in 1991, the new government’s priorities were the restoration of economic future growth and employment through liberalising the economy and allowing market forces a greater role ...
On 14 February 2014 the South African Department of Trade & Industry (DTI) gave notice of its intention to prohibit the use of a large number of European food and drinks names in terms of section 15 of the Merchandise Marks Act (MMA) - confusingly the notice also makes reference to section 13 of the MMA, a section that no longer exists ...
The Nils Svensson v Retriever Sverige AB decision addresses fundamental questions of copyright and Internet use. In essence, the case addresses the question of whether hyperlinking to freely accessible content requires authorization. The original plaintiffs of the Svensson case were Swedish journalists who wrote press articles that were published in the Goteborge-Posten newspaper and on its website, where they were freely accessible ...
On May 4, 2014 the Commission for Compensation and Royalties of the Israeli Patent Authority (the "Commission") rendered a decision relating to an employee's request to receive royalties for service inventions (the "Decision"). The Decision reduces the uncertainty that had surrounded the nature of an employee’s right to receive royalties for service inventions, and provides important guidelines for examining employee royalty waivers in agreements between employers and employees ...
New Regulations Governing Consumer Claims and Language Use in Consumer Information The Croatian Consumer Protection Act has recently updated how customer claims are to be handled. The receipt of complaints must now be confirmed in writing without delay ...
The Federal Circuit today overruled a federal district judge and held that Oracle’s API computer source code qualifies for copyright protection, potentially breathing new life into Oracle’s billion-dollar lawsuit against Google. Oracle America, Inc. v. Google Inc., Case No. 13-1021 (Fed. Cir. May 9, 2014) ...
In a pair of unanimous decisions issued today, the United States Supreme Court has substantially lowered the bar for the prevailing party’s recovery of attorneys’ fees under § 285 of the Patent Act. 35 U.S.C. § 285 provides that a prevailing party may recover attorneys’ fees in an “exceptional case ...
On April 10, Deputy Attorney General James Cole, White House senior adviser Rand Beers, the head of the U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division and the chairwoman of the Federal Trade Commission announced the release of the antitrust agencies’ “Antitrust Policy Statement on Sharing of Cybersecurity Information ...
