From fashion to pharma, there have been some significant intellectual property cases during 2020. The year got off to a fiery start in the Intellectual Property Enterprise Court in a case involving long-established retailer, the Edinburgh Woollen Mill, which could see a wider range of garment designs protected by copyright.
But this year, the focus has been on pharmaceuticals for more reasons than one. As the world turned to ‘big pharma’ to provide solutions to the Covid-19 crisis, a number of significant rulings have effectively curbed the opportunity to protect innovation in this sector, especially when it comes to SPCs.
2020 has also seen the scope of trade secrets protection in the spotlight in a case involving British travel company, Trailfinders. Meanwhile, the high profile Kymab case centred around sufficiency of disclosure, resulting in a situation where ingenuity will be required to draft patents providing meaningful protection to early-stage inventions.
In what has been an extraordinary and difficult year, our experts have been tracking the big developments throughout the past 12 months and have distilled them into the key takeaways you need from the most significant judgments. Here, we cut through the detail and focus on what these judgments mean for innovative businesses operating in the UK.
