OFT accepts licensing of IP rights to an 'Up-front' buyer to protect UK competition

The OFT has accepted a company's undertakings in relation to the sale of intellectual property rights as an alternative to referring its acquisition of another company to the Competition Commission.

Assessing patents: a new approach

The Court has approved a new test proposed by the Patent Office to assess patentability. The change results from a single judgment in the Court of Appeal in the matters of Aerotel Ltd v Telco Holdings Ltd (and others) and Macrossan’s Application in which the Court made a conscious decision not to follow the European Patent Office practice which has been widely varied and self-contradictory. This judgment is a definitive statement of how the law on patentable subject matter is to be applied in the UK.

Phoney perfume: look-alike and smell-alike L'Oreal

With Christmas around the corner, how many of us are considering cutting corners on presents and buying our loved ones cheap perfume rather than the real thing? Quite a few of us it would seem. At least, knock-off perfumes have been so popular with shoppers that L'Oreal have recently taken counterfeiters to court to stop them trading.

Oxfam highlights Starbucks' interference in Ethiopian Government’s trade mark applications

Recently, Oxfam reportedly claimed that Starbucks pushed for legal action that resulted in the US Trade Mark Registry denying Ethiopia's application for two coffee bean names, Sidamo and Harar. Gayle Curry, a partner in Morgan Cole's IP team, considers the arguments.

Consideration of non-textual copyright infringement: how much is too much?

The Da Vinci Code case attracted a great deal of attention in the UK and worldwide and is an interesting appraisal of a rare breed of copyright infringement. Two of the three authors of the non-fictional book 'Holy Blood Holy Grail' (which they described as a work of historical conjecture), brought a claim for non-textual copyright infringement against Dan Brown, the feted novelist behind The Da Vinci Code, alleging that he had infringed the copyright in their book.