Taiwan will establish a specialized Intellectual Property Court and implement the Intellectual Property Case Adjudication Act (the ‘Adjudication Act’), a new set of procedural rules for IP-related cases on 1 July 2008. This article briefly introduces the major changes that will be brought by the establishment of the IP Court and the Adjudication Act. Those changes aim to cure existing defects in current IP litigation procedure.
This article first addresses the problems in current practice and then introduces the key changes brought by the new laws: the establishment and jurisdiction of the IP Court, the availability of the invalidity defence, the new staff of technical examiners, the improvement of preservation of evidence, the introduction of protective orders, and the stricter standard for preliminary injunction.
The establishment of the IP Court, together with the implementation of the Adjudication Act, indicates that a new era of IP-related dispute resolution is at hand.
A dispute over the shape of air freshener packaging has provided 12 judgments in 6 EU member states that discuss the still relatively new Community Design Regulation. The decisions provide some guidance until the many interpretational issues in the Regulation can be definitively clarified by the European Court of Justice.
For now, the decisions establish that: The tests for novelty and ‘individual character’ are separate tests; The test for infringement is the flipside of the test for validity; The ‘informed user’ is an experienced user of the product and not a design expert; and The test for establishing ‘overall impression’ remains confused.
The decisions demonstrate that Registered Community Designs can be a powerful weapon in the fight against knock-off products, although not consistently across the EU.
This article concerns IP law in the USA and the Registered and Unregistered Community Design and Community trade mark law in the European Union.
The fashion industry profits from creative content, yet receives no legal protection under IP law in the USA. The argument against protection for fashion works stems from the belief that more design copying will lead to more incentive for new fashion designs, increasing commercial competitiveness. A reflection on challenges in US copyright, patent, and trademark law will explain why the Registered and Unregistered Community Design laws in European Union is the ideal solution for fashion design protection. Proposals to amend the Copyright Act to include the Design Piracy Prohibition Act are insufficient because they still do not provide the option of dual rights for designs. The EU extends its protection to designs that have a different overall appearance and to the trade origin of the product or service under Community trade mark law.
Adopting EU's scheme will provide economic privileges such as jobs and increasing commercial competitiveness within the USA. It will also increase creative expression among many other benefits.
This article deals with most important legal questions regarding graffiti. It seeks to identify issues that may arise in copyright and trade mark law. The analysis is based on selected international, Polish, UK, US and European Union regulations.
The social phenomenon known as graffiti is not legally indifferent. However, there are few articles dealing with those issues relevant in IP law. The author presents a short overview of the contemporary graffiti movement. He then presents important IP legal problems that may arise as regards to graffiti activity and briefly analyzes those issues relevant to domestic and international legal regimes.
Consistent with the TRIPs Agreement, the patent system has a ‘one size’ approach to duration of protection, in that all inventions are entitled to the same maximum period of grant: 20 years. This paper seeks to answer the question whether this ‘one size’ approach fits all inventions.
The article determines if the present system of patent protection is within the bounds of what might be considered optimal, when account is taken of the economic theory on duration, the real world practices of patentees regarding renewal of their patents, and the legal features of the current system. It finds that the system on duration of patent protection currently in operation matches closely to what would be considered optimal.
These considerations are relevant to practitioners advising their clients on duration of protection and renewal rates, and to policy makers concerned with optimizing the patent system.