Adaptation of patent law provisions due to the Unitary patent system
A major adjustment within the framework of the new Unitary patent is the reorganisation of the double protection prohibition. Since 1 June 2023, it has...
Rising numbers of patent and trademark applications
In 2023, applications for inventions at the German Patent and Trademark Office (GPTO) increased significantly. Compared to the previous year, the GPTO recorded a 3.4...
Freelance inventors in Germany
Groundbreaking inventions, such as the expanding dowel or the airbag, originate from imaginative inventors. Such inventions are usually the intellectual achievements of so-called “independent inventors”...
Dispute over PAULANER SPEZI ended
Riegele, a well-known Swabian brewery based in Augsburg, owns the trade mark rights to SPEZI. The Paulaner brewery, a long-established Munich brewery with an annual...
Unitary patent – the participating member states of the EU
Twenty-four EU Member States have signed the Agreement on a Unified Patent Court (UPCA). Initially, the UPCA will enter into force in the seventeen states...
Update on the Unitary Patent
The Unitary Patent and the Unified Patent Court Agreement (UPC) are about to enter into force. The Unitary Patent is a “European patent with unitary...
Federal Constitutional Court clears the way for Unitary Patent
The German Federal Constitutional Court at Karlsruhe rejected two new applications for preliminary injunction against the European Unitary Patent by a decision of June 23,...
Development of IP Applications during the Corona Pandemic
In the past Corona pandemic year 2020, 13.5% more trademarks were registered at the German Patent and Trademark Office than in the previous year 2019....
Head start through intellectual property rights
A joint study by the European Patent Office (EPO) and the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) reveals that companies with intellectual property rights have...
T 1621/16: Criteria for multiple selection from lists to differentiate against the state of the art
In order to differentiate a European patent application or a European patent from the prior art, it is often necessary to amend the main claim...
‘MÄDELSABEND’ – No Distinctiveness for Sweets?
At the core of the decision ‘Mädelsabend’ is the demarcation from the decisions of the German Federal Court of Justice (BGH) on ‘#darferdas?’ of June...
Patentability of plants and animals
Since the two decisions “Broccoli-II” and “Tomatoes II” (G 2/12 and G2/13) of the Enlarged Board of Appeal of the European Patent Office (EPO) of...