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The latest insights, sector developments and case updates from Potter Clarkson. Explore up-to-date content from our experts and stay informed on the issues shaping the IP landscape.
The latest insights, sector developments and case updates from Potter Clarkson. Explore up-to-date content from our experts and stay informed on the issues shaping the IP landscape.

A European Patent Office (EPO) Patent opposition is the legal process that allows anyone to challenge the validity of a EPO patent in all the territories where it is in force in a single action by filing an opposition against its grant on the basis of novelty, inventive step, industrial applicability, insufficiency and/or added matter.

This white paper has been written by an R&D grant writer and a patent attorney to give the company owners, directors, executives and founders of innovation-led businesses of all sizes a more complete picture of how to successfully negotiate the grant application process.
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On 1 June 2023, the UPC agreement finally came into force.

Potter Clarkson proudly secures its position in the esteemed Europe’s Leading Patent Law Firms report by the Financial Times.
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On the 24th May the General Court decided that Emmentaler cheese cannot be trademarked in the European Union. The decision appears to have hinged on the German public’s view that Emmentaler is a type of cheese, not a geographic origin.
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Chemically synthesised crop protection molecules (think: pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides) developed in the 20th century underpinned the increases in crop yield and resilience that provided much of the world’s population with a ready supply of plentiful and affordable food.
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Innovation - and by extension IP - has never been more important for cleantech companies. According to the International Energy Agency, for every $1 spent on fossil fuels, $1.7 is now spent on clean energy. Five years ago this ratio was 1:1.

Yesterday a US Supreme Court panel unanimously decided to support Jack Daniel's Tennessee Whiskey’s opposition to VIP Products’ ‘Bad Spaniels’ dog toy. They felt the product was an obvious parody of their brand.
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Recent advances in automation, machine learning, and cleantech have heralded the “4th industrial revolution”. This promises to not only rapidly change how we live and work, but also transform it beyond recognition.

From the battlefield to “Y2K”, and now the S/S’23 runway, “cargo trousers”, or “cargo pants”, have been a British clothing staple for more than 80 years. Therefore, the hurdle to be able to rely on unregistered design rights to protect such designs in the UK is high in such a crowded field; designers must be able to rebut any claim that their designs are not sufficiently “original”. A UK judgment, handed down last week, highlights the need for designers to assess the merits of their case before asserting infringement of UK unregistered design right (UKUDR) before the UK Court.
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The tastes of food and drink consumers are continuing to change. People are more health conscious. They are looking for more sustainable options. At the same time, they want new, exciting and tasty new alternatives to enjoy. These demands are hitting the producers of alcoholic beverages as hard as any other part of the food and drink industry.
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Defining intellectual property (IP) ownership is important because it establishes exactly who has the right to use, protect and exploit the relevant IP assets by:
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In March Google announced that May 2023 would see the launch of eight new top-level domains, .Foo, .Zip, .Mov, .Nexus, .Dad, .Phd, .Prof and .Esq.

3D printing is now a widespread technology that may have seemed as fanciful 100 years ago as Star Trek's replicators do to us now. We may be a long way off from synthesising matter from light to create food and other objects at will but even this fictitious invention was a development on earlier technologies (protein sequencers and food synthesisers).
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The Court of Appeal in Match Group LLC v Muzmatch Ltd has given useful guidance on the role of honest concurrent use in trade mark infringement cases.
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The supermarket wars continued on Wednesday 19 April, with Mrs Justice J. Smith handing down her judgment in the High Court in favour of Lidl.