Prosecution

Changes to European Union’s trademark system set forth by Regulation no. 2015/2424 of the European Parliament and the Council are entering into force on March 23, 2016.

Modifications include new names for Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market (OHIM), from now on the “European Union Intellectual Property Office” (EUIPO), and for the “Community Trademark” (CTM), henceforward the “European Union Trademark” (EUTM).

Besides these new names, other changes include, among others:

The Ugandan Industrial Property Act of 2014 is now in force.

The main features are summarised below:

a) Patents and Utility Models

Finally, PCT international and national phase applications will be recognised.

Apart from this, some major rules regarding biotechnological inventions are introduced, namely, some patent exclusions were provide, such as, natural substances, whether purified, synthetized or otherwise isolated from nature.

18 year old TV celebrity and socialite Kylie Jenner who has acquired fame by appearances in the reality TV show “Keeping Up with the Kardashians” sought to have her name protected for advertising and endorsement purposes. Jenner applied to claim ownership of the name “Kylie” in order to secure the expansion of her cosmetics and clothing collections.

The Department of Intellectual Property of the Ministry of Science and Technology of the People’s Republic of Laos has issued a notice in which it informs that it will be allowing Multi-Class applications for trademarks as from the 1st of February of 2016.

The Notice No. 57/MOST.DIP. underlines the advantages of applying a multi-class application compared to the previous single-class system. Such as:

The Coca-Cola Company has been trying to register the trademark ZERO for its low calorie, zero sugar version of Coca-Cola, but is facing opposition from Dr Pepper Snapple Group (known for SCHWEPPES), although a decision from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is expected during this year.

The Principality of Andorra was, until January 2016, one of the only two European countries where it was not possible to protect inventions throughout patent applications (along with the Vatican City).

This is no longer the situation, as the Patent Law 26/2014, passed by the Principality of Andorra in 30th October in 2014, entered in force in January 2016.

The new European Union Regulation no. 2015/2424 (article 28) that is introducing a new set of rules for community trademarks, including its own renaming (to European Union Trademark), is allowing owners of community trademarks applied for before 22 June 2012 to change (boost) the list of goods or services, without requiring the payment of an additional official fee.

Patent stakeholders are already familiar with the problems of patent trolls. Every day they are used to hearing about the problems resulting from the behaviour of such “patent owners”. As it is commonly known, a patent troll is a pejorative term employed to describe certain individual persons or companies that misuse patents as a strategy to obtain royalties.

The Trademark Office in Gaza has issued a Ministerial Decision (No. 16 of 2010) on the 1st of August 2010 stating that it is no longer possible to file new trademark applications in class 32 covering beers and lager, nor is it possible to renew trademarks that are already registered covering the same items.

The Trademark Office has reiterated its Decision on prohibiting the goods stated above on a recently published notification.

The harmonisation of intellectual property laws has been a long-standing project for the six Gulf Cooperation Council (hereinafter GCC) states. Attentions are focused on when the law will come into force.

The six countries that form the GCC (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates) have been harmonising a trademark law since the 1980s. Several other concepts have been drafted during the following years, but none has actually been enforced.