NewLegal Review: news • 17th July 2015

Lucasfilm clinches victory to saber in Star Wars domains case

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away… well, on 5 July in the UK, in fact, a fancy-dress retailer was found to be at one with the Dark Side of the Intellectual Property (IP) Force. On the wrong end of the legal lightsaber was online party-costume vendor Abscissa.com Ltd. Over a period of 11 years

NewLegal Review: news • 17th July 2015

Marvel freed from web of US ‘Spider-Man patent’ case

Marvel Entertainment has shaken off the creepy-crawlies of a long-running patent case at the US Supreme Court, following legal action brought by inventor Stephen Kimble. In the late 1990s, Marvel reached an agreement with Kimble that entitled him to 3% royalties from sales of the company’s

NewLegal Review: news • 17th July 2015

Women’s patents rising faster at universities, says study

Patents devised by women have risen at a quicker rate in universities than the business world, a new report has found. Compiled by Professor Cassidy Sugimoto of Indiana University, The Academic Advantage: Gender Disparities in Patenting revealed that in the four decades up to

NewLegal Review: news • 22nd June 2015

Everything is awesome for Lego’s EU minifigure trademark

They may look small, but they are many, and Lego’s renowned minifigures have – with a little legal assistance – fended off a challenge to their collective status as a protected trademark. In proceedings wrapped on 16 June at the General Court of the European Union, Lego blocked a

NewLegal Review: news • 14th June 2015

Enemy is the state in surveillance patents case

An American camera maker has trained the electronic eyes of its legal department on no less a quarry than the US Government, in proceedings over how Federal agencies have used the company’s technology. In its lawsuit, Texas-based manufacturer 3rd Eye Surveillance is seeking extensive damages for the deployment of its intellectual property (IP) across eight organisations

NewLegal Review: news • 14th June 2015

Plea over fee levels for unitary patent renewals

Renewal fees in the forthcoming EU unitary patent system must be kept low, or risk freezing out dynamic new enterprises, according to Arnaldo Abruzzini, secretary general of major lobbying group Eurochambres. The Brussels-based association for European chambers of commerce – which represents around 2,000 national business groups with a

NewLegal Review: news • 5th June 2015

Turtles duo scoops class-action status in satellite music suit

A swarm of Turtles bearing legal complaints could soon engulf America’s satellite radio services, following a high-profile interim ruling on the West Coast. The floodgates have been opened via a US District Court for the Central District of California move to

NewLegal Review: news • 5th June 2015

Domain swipe aims to hole Pirate Bay below waterline

Following two years of proceedings, the Stockholm District Court has confiscated the Swedish .se domains of torrent-linking website The Pirate Bay. The relevant domains – ThePirateBay.se and PirateBay.se – are now in possession of the Swedish government, in accordance with

NewLegal Review: news • 27th May 2015

‘Supercharge innovation on new antibiotics,’ urges top-level review

Billions of dollars of public money must be used to jump start innovation on the next wave of antibiotics if the world is to avert a health disaster: that is the message from a global investigation of antimicrobial resistance (AMR), produced for UK Prime

NewLegal Review: news • 16th May 2015

Remember the Alamo… is trademarked, Texas brewers told

A brave defence of the Alamo: old news, you may think – but the San Antonio fortress has once again been the site of a turf war, albeit on a much smaller scale than the famous battle, and strictly within the world of intellectual property (IP). The US District Court for the Western District of

NewLegal Review: news • 23rd April 2015

Smart materials company D3O absorbs high-impact funding

Venture capital’s key role in driving intellectual property (IP) has been highlighted with smart materials specialist D3O’s announcement that it has secured £13m backing for an extensive, new research and development (R&D) programme. The funds will support

NewLegal Review: news • 21st April 2015

Spoilers! Patent aims to keep a lid on plot shocks

We’ve all been there: piling into that social network or chat room with a bunch of like-minded enthusiasts for a virtual chinwag about a cultural artifact that has seized minds across the planet, only to find that our knowledge of forthcoming events stops somewhat short of what our peers have already gleaned. However, as the world’s

NewLegal Review: news • 14th April 2015

Sound is latest battlefront in war on domain abuse

Visually impaired people who rely on audio tools to surf the web are being duped by a new form of domain squatting. According to research led by Stony Brook University, unscrupulous applicants are registering bogus domains that they know will sound the same as well-known, official versions when read aloud by text-to-speech

NewLegal Review: news • 10th April 2015

IP’s Theory of Everything: Stephen Hawking files for trademarks

As if to underline the wisdom of formally registering a brand, it has emerged that none other than Einstein Award-winning theoretical physicist Professor Stephen Hawking has filed for trademarks in his own name. The details came to light in the 20 March edition of the Trademark Journal

NewLegal Review: feature • 2nd April 2015

Fifty domains of grey: protecting brands from adult gTLDs

It is a sign of the times that one of the world’s most popular recording artists has launched a pre-emptive strike to prevent her name from being associated with adult entertainment. On 23 March, news broke that country-pop singer Taylor Swift registered eponymous generic Top-Level

NewLegal Review: news • 23rd March 2015

Europe ‘leading the charge’ in new-gTLD sales

An early health check on the retail market for new generic Top-Level domains (gTLDs) has come from a senior figure at one of the world’s leading registrars. Gustavo Arruda – marketing head at Toronto-based Tucows Inc – revealed in a 5 March blog for the company’s OpenSRS domains reselling arm that left-of-the-dot domains stemming from

NewLegal Review: news • 17th March 2015

Attorney in Congress plea over ‘threatening’ patent demand letters

An attorney for a major US non-profit group has gone to Congress to speak out against excessive cease-and-desist letters in the patents field. Vera Ranieri – staff lawyer at digital civil liberties advocacy organisation the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) – made her plea to the House Energy &

NewLegal Review: news • 17th March 2015

British business trailing on patent filings, says CIPA

UK companies are failing to protect their innovations in high enough volume, according to the Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys (CIPA). The group’s complaint has emerged following the recent release of European Patent Office (EPO) figures that – as in 2014 – showed the organisation had hit a record high

NewLegal Review: news • 17th March 2015

A Hall and Oates sound-alike granola? They can’t go for that

A breakfast cereal maker’s bid to scatter oats of a maverick stripe in the trademark arena has met with tough opposition from those otherwise soft-rocking vocal smoothies, Daryl Hall and John Oates. Citing a range of grievances – such as trademark infringement and unfair competition – the

NewLegal Review: feature • 3rd February 2015

Making creative marks: the stories behind the signs

Try to imagine a world without Nike. Difficult, isn’t it? Back in 1971, the company was only just getting on its feet for what would prove to be a long, long race, and was going through that maverick phase that seems to grip early-stage startups no matter where – or when – they are founded