Norman MacLachlan is attending ECTA's 32nd Annual Conference in Bucharest, Romania which is being held on the 19th-22nd June – the first major intellectual property event to be organised in that city. For 18 years prior to his stepping down as Treasurer in 2006, Norman was Treasurer-General and a Member of the Management Committee of ECTA, the [...]
As those following the ongoing battle between the smartphone giants Apple and Samsung will know, US District Judge Lucy Koh last year asked Apple’s lawyers were they “smoking crack” because they expected her to go through 75 pages of objections to witnesses. In the UK, Judge Colin Birss said that Samsung’s tablets were “not cool enough” [...]
The European Patent Office (EPO) and the State Intellectual Property Office of the People’s Republic of China (SIPO) today signed a Memorandum of Understanding to enhance their cooperation in the area of patent classification. As of January 2014, SIPO will start classifying its newly published invention patent applications in some selected technical fields into the [...]
Bernadette Walsh and Peter MacLachlan attended the 135th INTA Meeting in Dallas, Texas from 4th-8th May 2013. Also at the Conference were IP experts from more than 140 countries with talks on a variety of trade mark related topics covering many geographic regions and industries. The keynote address was by Jerry Jones Owner, President and General [...]
Community Trade Marks It is clear that any company which intends to trade in the European Union should consider the possibility of obtaining a Community Trade Mark (CTM) registration. CTMs are unitary in character and a single registration covers all the member States of the European Union. Pre- filing Searches While a valid prior national [...]