Suppose that you want to obtain a patent for an invention related to your cannabis business. What if the invention is a device for extracting oils, an ornamental design for a new vaporizer, or a new breed of cannabis plant? Should you attempt to patent your invention with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office? Can you obtain a patent from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office? The answer is YES! if the invention meets certain conditions for patentability.
First Witch: When shall we three meet again/In thunder, lightning, or in rain?
Second Witch: When the hurlyburly’s done,/When the battle’s lost and won.
Third Witch: That will be ere the set of sun.
Nowadays, intellectual property rights constitute very important assets of the companies. Therefore, in order to avoid conflicts and uncertainty, Greek legislation offers specific provisions concerning the ownership of inventions, designs and the copyright on a work created in the course of an employment relationship. These provisions could be of interest of any company operating in Greece and governed by Greek Law.
bkp partners Martin Reinisch and Georg Fellner have obtained a favorable judgment by an Austrian Appellate Court for bkp client Spirits International (SPI Group) confirming the latter’s rights in the iconic Stolichnaya and Moskovskaya trademarks in Austria.
Sometimes blogging topics are hard to come by. It is often difficult because, as a sage once noted in discussing the search for The Ultimate Computer, one wants to do one’s best, but something like creativity “doesn’t work on an assembly line basis. … You can’t simply say, today I will be brilliant,” insightful, informative or even mildly amusing. But other times topics materialize right before your eyes, as if dropped on your desk by fate or chance, and then they seemingly write themselves, without either assembly lines or much hard work.
Summary
In its decision no 1589/2017 the Greek Supreme Court upheld the appeal brought by the Greek company “DPH” against the Dutch company “P”. The Supreme Court held that the Court of Appeals’ decision, which had upheld definitely the lawsuit of “P” against “DPH” for breach of “P”’s essential patents, was wrong in finding they were sufficient reasons for granting patent protection to “P”’s disputed patents under the applicable rule of Greek law setting the conditions for granting patent protection.
Suppose that you want to register a trademark that identifies a source of goods or services for your business. You file a federal trademark application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Subsequently, you receive an Office Action from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office that initially refuses registration of your mark based on a likelihood of confusion with a similar trademark? Can you overcome the refusal to obtain a registration from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office? The answer is often YES!
The protection of copyright from infringements taking place via the Internet has been in Greece until today extremely inefficient and time-consuming.
Legal experts and copyright holders hope that this situation will alter soon. On July 2017, a new Copyright Law 4481/2017 was adopted amending the existing Copyright Law 2121/1993. The new Law provides dispositions aiming to regulate for the first time in Greece this kind of situations. To be more specific, a new article to Law 2121/1993 (article 66E) is added, which aims to enhance the protection of copyright and related rights on the Internet via a “notice and takedown procedure”.
The search for spices, and the gold that one expected to find nearby (or earn through sale of the spices), in many ways drove the Age of Exploration. And spices still hold a special place in our economy and in our imagination; in fact, we believe that spices “all hold magic.” Part of that magic is that spices give “[e]ach day … a color, a smell,” as we are told by The Mistress of Spices herself. Well, color and smell (or the more delicate scent) are now adding spice to trademark law around the world as businesses explore new ways to differentiate their goods and services from those of their competitors. Getting trademark protection for color and scent may depend where you seek such protections, as the rules vary from country to country.
On September 27, 2017, the Moscow Region Commercial Court published a significant decision in a patent dispute between Novartis AG, Swiss originator, and Nativa LLC, Russian generic producer (case No. A41-85807/2016).
Welcome to ILN-terviews, a series of profiles of ILN member firm attorneys, designed to give a unique insight into the lawyers who make up our Network. For our latest interview, we chose ILN member, Alishan Naqvee of our member firm LexCounsel Law Offices in New Delhi, India. In one sentence, how would you describe your...… Continue Reading
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