The UK Government published guidance on 24th September outlining potential ramifications to trade mark and designs law should the UK leave the EU without an agreement in place – a ‘no deal’ scenario. The paper noted it was the duty as a “responsible government to prepare for all eventualities, including ‘no deal’”. To read the article in full, please click here.
The Mathys & Squire Trade Mark team understand that the goodwill in a brand can be the greatest asset a company owns and when managed carefully, that asset can be used to generate significant value in terms of revenue, market dominance and repeat product sales.
To learn more about our Trade Mark practice, please click here.
To combat the grey weather, London hosted its annual Design Festival, bringing some much needed colour to the city. The week long event showcased cutting edge designs and creations by artists, architects, interior designers and entrepreneurs across the city.
In honour of the Design Festival, we posted a series of Daily Design Dos and Don’ts on our Twitter page, sharing some top tips for protecting your designs, creativity and intellectual property.
Keep it confidential! Registered Designs should be sought before the design is publicly disclosed; otherwise this can preclude the opportunity to seek Registered Design protection.
Keep it cost effective. Under both UK and European Registered Design systems it’s possible to file several designs simultaneously in a multi-part application. The more you file, the lower the cost per design.
Keep designs protected. Registering a design in Europe and the UK is simple inexpensive and quick compared to other forms of intellectual property – plus there’s very little that cannot be protected by Registered Designs
Keep it clear and accountable. The first owner(s) of the intellectual property in a design is the original devisor(s) of that design.
Keep an eye on the calendar. The filing date of a Registered Design is critical. To remain in force UK & European Registered Designs must be renewed every 5 years.
Keep digi in mind. Registered Designs can be used to protect aesthetic aspects of digital products e.g. icons and aspects of graphical user interfaces (GUIs) – not just the external, physical product appearance.
Keep all your bases covered. Registered and Unregistered Designs are effective tools for protecting design aesthetics but should be used as part of a suite of IP rights e.g. trade marks, patents and copyrights.
To learn more about our Designs services, please click here or contact one of our attorneys on 0207 830 0000.
On 18 October 2018, Mathys & Squire Partner, James Pitchford, will be conducting an IP training day at the Cambridge Information and Intellectual Property Meeting (CIIPM), alongside CIIPM founders, Jane List and Stuart Newbold.
The topics covered will range from discussing the simple question – what is IP and why does it matter – to exploring the various types of IP protection available and the steps you can take to protect your creativity, ideas and innovation.
With information on patents, trade marks, copyrights and designs, the event will provide insights and tools to help protect and commercialise your IP portfolio alongside developing strategic business decisions.
For more information about the event, including ticket availability, please visit the CIIPM website.
James is a member of the European Patent Institute, a fellow of the Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys (CIPA) and an active member of CIPA’s International Liaison Committee, through which he has represented the Institute overseas. James has significant experience working with entrepreneurs, start-ups, spin-outs and SMEs, alongside large corporations, research institutions and universities.
CIIPM – founded in 2015 by Jane List of Extract Information and Stuart Newbold of Patent Search & Information Management, Cambridge Information and Intellectual Property Meeting aims to provide a knowledge sharing space a space for knowledge sharing and learning to those who work with information and commercialising IP.
On 12 September 2018, the UK Government announced a new Agricultural Bill, setting out a major post-Brexit policy to replace the current subsidy system of Direct Payments to farmers based on the total amount of land farmed.
A new Environmental Land Management system will start from next year which aims to reward farmers and land managers in return for “public goods”, including better air and water quality, improved soil health, higher animal welfare standards, public access to the countryside and measures to reduce flooding. Those that provide the greatest environmental benefits will be rewarded with the largest payments, which is believed to lay the foundations for a Green Brexit.
Key aims
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has said that the Bill will be underpinned by measures to increase productivity and investment in R&D, including funding for research projects. As such, using the powers in the Agriculture Bill, Defra has pledged to:
- support innovation to improve productivity;
- improve investment in farming equipment, technology and infrastructure; and
- facilitate collaboration and pioneer the use of more innovative and efficient farming techniques.
A Defra policy statement has since served to highlight the priority of the Bill in enhancing food security based on strong domestic production, acknowledging that British farmers play a crucial role in the food chain and that this future policy will support farmers to provide more home-grown produce.
This comes at a time when concerns over global food shortages are steadily growing as current projected food production trends fall well short of the projected demand of a global population (expected to reach 9 billion by 2050), and when importation of food products from foreign countries may become more complicated for the UK following Brexit.
Why focus on agriculture?
Agri-Science was identified in 2014 as part of the UK Intellectual Property Office’s (IPO) “Eight Great Technologies” report as a robust and growing area for innovation in the UK. We have already had glimpses of a number of new technologies that are set to revolutionise traditional farming methods and potentially offer farmers and land managers a greater share of the rewards under the new system. The use of new technologies, including drones and robotics, farm management software packages, vertical farming, aquaponic farms for urban environments, gene-editing and biological pesticides, to name but a few, may become even more commonplace as farmers become further incentivised to improve their productivity and the extent they contribute to the “public goods”.
The Agricultural Bill thus appears to add additional impetus for further research and innovation in what has already been identified as a significant area of growth in the UK.
Mathys & Squire’s Agri-Tech team work with a range of businesses at the cutting edge of farming and food production. To discuss IP and Agri-tech, please call 0207 830 0000.
Michael Stott has worked in the patent profession since 2008 and has been involved in the drafting and prosecution of patent applications in the UK, Europe, and many overseas jurisdictions, including the US. Michael’s expertise span a wide range of technologies including electronic materials and devices, agrochemicals, petrochemistry, food chemistry and absorbent articles.
The European Medicines Agency (EMA) has pulled all contracts with the UK’s Medicines & Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) ahead of the UK withdrawing from the EU next year. The EMA has instead redistributed the UK’s product portfolio to other EU members – prompting questions about the potential impacts of Brexit on healthcare and what will fill the gap for the MHRA.
Mathys & Squire Life Sciences Partner, Martin MacLean, provided insight on this development which has since been featured in PharmSource, European Pharmaceutical Manufacturer and Labiotech. Please click the images below to download the articles and read Martin’s commentary.
For further information regarding Brexit and the EMA or intellectual property developments in the Life Sciences and Chemistry field, please contact Martin on [email protected] or call 0207 830 0000 to speak with a patent attorney in our Life Sciences team.
Martin Maclean is a Band 1 Patent Attorney and a member of the Life Sciences Committee for the Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys. He has consistently been nominated by peers as one of the world’s leading practitioners in the field of patents featuring in the 2016, 2017 and 2018 editions of Who’s Who Legal: Patents and has also been ranked in the latest edition of IAM Strategy 300 – The World’s Leading IP Strategists 2017.
Our Manchester Mathys & Squire team is attending Venturefest North West 2018.
Ready to help innovators protect, commercialise and develop tailored strategies for their intellectual property, the team are looking forward to meeting budding entrepreneurs at the Manchester Central event on Thursday 13th September.
Venturefest also includes an Innovation Showcase Competition!
Companies compete across four categories: product innovation, service innovation, digital innovation and innovative established business, pitching their business ideas for the chance to win thousands of pounds worth of business support, provided by organisers GC Business Growth Hub and its partners.
Open to small and medium-sized businesses from across the North West, the competition is now in its fifth year and is a fantastic opportunity to present your ideas to the market place.
We are delighted to be awarding one lucky prize winner an in-depth IP clinic: a chance to sit with our team and run through your patent and trade mark portfolio, audit your IP and discuss the potential challenges facing you and your business.
We look forward to seeing you there – and good luck to the competition finalists!
When it comes to IP and your software, here are a few things to think about!
A common misconception is…
That it is not possible to patent software. Although computer programs per se are excluded from patentability, many software inventions are indeed patentable.
In general, you can obtain patents for inventions which are…
a) technical in nature and b) new and non-obvious.
These criteria apply to software inventions; however identifying the technical nature of these inventions can be more difficult. The question is whether the software addresses a technical problem, rather than merely addressing e.g. business needs.
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Key indicators of patentable software inventions include…
Improvements (e.g. in terms of efficiency, resource usage, reliability, security) to the operation of external technical devices or processes or to the internal functioning of a computer system.
The most important thing is…
There is no simple, reliable rule and it is important to look at each case individually.
It’s not just about patents…
- Does your software include a brand used to identify your product to customers?
- Does your software include a user interface?
- Have you thought about licensing your software?
There are various means to protect the IP in your software, from registered rights such as patents and designs, through to copyright and trade marks.
Where there is commercial value in your software, we can help you protect it.
We have extensive experience working with software companies from start-ups through to Silicon Valley multinationals. Our team can tease out which elements of your inventions might provide promising subject matter for a patent application alongside navigating the time frames and fine lines of applicable patentability criteria. Click to download a summary about software protection.
To discuss the IP in your software, please contact one of our attorneys or call 0207 830 0000.
On 25th July 2018, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) ended a decade-long debate on whether organisms obtained by gene-editing techniques should be treated as genetically modified organisms (GMOs) within the meaning of the GMO Directive… and the answer is “yes”.
The upshot of this landmark ruling is that organisms obtained by modern gene-editing techniques, such as CRISPR/Cas9, must go through the same regulatory and approval process as organisms obtained using traditional transgenic methods. Craig Titmus, a Partner in our Life Sciences and Chemistry team, explains.
Background
The GMO Directive (2001/18/EC) is the key legislation controlling cultivation and sale of GMOs within the EU. Organisms categorised as “GMO” fall within the scope of the GMO Directive, and must undergo a risk assessment, public consultation and labelling, prior to authorisation. Mechanisms also exist for individual EU member states to provisionally restrict or prohibit the use and/or sale of an authorised GMO. For organisms categorised as “GMO”, the route to market is far from straightforward.
Traditional transgenic methods for generating genetically modified organisms leave a genetic “fingerprint” which can readily distinguish such modified organisms from those existing in nature. Few would argue that organisms, modified using traditional transgenic techniques, do not qualify as “GMO”. At the other end of the scale, few would argue that naturally-occurring organisms are “GMOs” (even though random genetic mutations occur in nature and give rise to the biodiversity present in the natural environment).
Between these two extremes, there exists a grey area in which the delineation between “GMO” and “non-GMO” is not clear-cut.
One such example is the use of chemical mutagens and ionising radiation to introduce random genetic variations e.g. in conventional crop breeding techniques. At first blush, although these conventional mutagenic techniques often leave no genetic fingerprint, many would assume that the resulting organisms would be categorised as “GMO”, and would therefore fall within the scope of the GMO Directive.
This is not the case. As set out in the GMO Directive and confirmed in C-528/16, “organisms obtained by means of techniques/methods of mutagenesis which have conventionally been used in a number of applications and have a long safety record are exempt from [the obligations set out in the GMO Directive (subject to other EU provisions)]”.
The GMO Directive and gene-editing techniques
Several years after the GMO Directive was directed back in March 2001, modern gene-editing techniques (such as CRISPR/Cas-9) have been developed, enabling targeted modification of an organism’s genetic material, without leaving a genetic fingerprint. Absent a genetic fingerprint, one cannot readily distinguish organisms that were obtained using modern gene-editing techniques from organisms that were modified using conventional mutagenesis techniques (or, indeed, from organisms in which the same mutation occurred through a random natural event). Drawing parallels with conventional mutagenesis techniques, it was widely anticipated that the CJEU would rule that organisms obtained using modern gene-editing techniques would fall outside the scope of the GMO Directive.
On the contrary, C-528/16 held that “new techniques/methods of mutagenesis” which enable targeted modification of an organism’s genetic material, might carry the same risks as traditional transgenic organisms, and must therefore be subject to the requirements set out in the GMO Directive.
GMOs and Brexit
The cultivation and sale of GMOs in the UK is, of course, mainly regulated by EU law. At the time of writing, it is virtually-impossible to imagine what a Brexit deal might look like, but the Department for Environmental Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) has just issued a guidance notice entitled “Developing genetically modified organisms (GMOs) if there’s no Brexit deal”, which seeks to explain “how controls on the release of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) into the environment would be affected if the UK leaves the EU in March 2019 without a deal.” The guidance notice may be summarised as follows: in the event of a no-deal scenario, the UK Government will maintain the status quo.
Craig Titmus is a Partner in our Life Sciences and Chemistry team and is based in our Cambridge office. Craig holds a bachelor’s degree in molecular biology and biochemistry and a PhD in biotechnology. His practice covers diverse biotechnological subject-matter, with a particular focus on vaccines, diagnostics, therapeutic antibodies and peptide conjugates and agri-tech. Craig has significant experience of European and international patent prosecution, and coordinates global IP strategies for a range of clients including start-ups, SMEs, universities, large corporations and the UK Government. The “Legal 500” notes that Craig is an “excellent” patent attorney with “strong a technical background and highly developed legal skills” (2017). For any questions related to GMOs, please contact Craig via [email protected].
On 19th July 2018, the UK Government announced the establishment of a new Cambridge-based task force: the Digital Framework Task Group (DFTG), a team focused on harnessing the power of digital technologies to help UK industry plan for future construction needs.
Officially launched by Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury, Robert Jenrick, and run by the University of Cambridge’s Centre for Digital Built Britain (CDBB), the task force will bring the expertise of industry, academia and government together and advise the Treasury on how data, artificial intelligence and machine learning can help predict and meet the needs of the UK.
With extensive experience in the digital field, Cambridge alumnus and Mathys & Squire Partner, James Pitchford, is delighted by the news of this digi-development:
“Cambridge is the perfect location for the DFTG, as it will enable the Group to tap in to the city’s wealth of experience in the digital field, across both academia and industry, that has been built-up over many decades.
The University and the city are both world-renowned for digital innovation, and it will be fascinating to see what new developments will arise from the DFTG, and how these will be applied to real-world projects that will benefit people’s lives.
For instance, 5G telecommunications and IoT sensors are now just around the corner, and these, combined with large-scale data processing and advanced analytical techniques, have great potential in monitoring the use of urban infrastructure and enabling future infrastructure to be planned, built and managed more effectively.”
Mathys & Squire has been actively involved in the Cambridge digital community since opening its doors in Cambridge almost ten years ago.
From artificial intelligence to encryption, image recognition to distributed data processing; the Mathys & Squire team are actively working and engaging with the local technological community, alongside governments and corporates, helping to protect innovation in the digital and manufacturing fields for the greater good of clients and the UK economy.
The team look forward to learning more about the DFTG and hope to see them around Cambridge soon.
For further conversation regarding Cambridge innovation and intellectual property, please email James Pitchford on [email protected].
James obtained an MA honours degree in natural sciences (physics and materials science) and a PhD in materials science, both from the University of Cambridge. He entered the patent profession in 2000, and qualified as a European Patent Attorney in 2005 and a Chartered Patent Attorney in 2006. James also holds a certificate in intellectual property law from the University of London. He has given lectures on intellectual property at the University of Cambridge, seminars on European patent law and practice at the Japan Patent Attorneys Association in Tokyo, and a presentation on EPO examination policy at the Korean Intellectual Property Office.
Kit Kat Case Closed?
The decision of the European Court of Justice, handed down on 25 July 2018 in relation to the shape of the four-finger KitKat chocolate bar, marks an interesting development in the treatment of shape marks under European Union Law. It has solidified the necessity for significant and wide-reaching evidence when attempting to claim exclusive rights in respect of reasonably commonplace or simple shape marks across the EU.
Companies within this sector are now unlikely to obtain trade mark rights in the shape of their products or packaging, save where those shapes depart significantly from the norm of that sector, or where they have become extremely well-known as an indication of the company in all member states of the EU.
This may mean that companies within the food and beverage sector will look to utilise more distinctive shapes for their products and packaging if they ultimately wish to obtain trade mark rights in the same in the future.
The decision will also send a message to companies in the sector that a bank of evidence should be created that shows sales, marketing and consumer perception within the various countries of the EU as early as possible so that this can be called upon to later support an application.
It is possible that the number of European Union trade mark applications for marks of this type may now decrease and companies instead focus on their core markets within the EU and apply to protect the shapes nationally in those countries, so as to avoid the evidence burden required at EU level.
One thing that should be appreciated however is that the decision does not automatically have the same effect in respect of other types of trade marks, such as word or logo marks. A non-distinctiveness objection must be overcome in the countries in which the mark is deemed to be non-distinctive and often, with word marks, language will play a big part in this.
As such, the territory for which evidence is required will be smaller and relate only to the countries in which that language is widely spoken or understood.
For further conversation regarding trade marks and commercialising intellectual property protection, please email Laura West on [email protected]
Laura works with clients to ensure their IP strategy fits closely with their overall business strategy and aims to provide legal advice that has a strong commercial foundation. She has worked with a wide range of clients including those in the fashion, media, medical, construction, engineering and service-based sectors.
