Could your Halloween costume land you in the middle of a legal nightmare?
The answer may scare you …
Way more than an everyday interest in IP
The answer may scare you …
The US Court of Appeals of the Ninth Circuit has held that the famous sequence of yoga poses (or “asanas”) developed by Bikram Choudhury (and performed at 40°C) does not attract copyright protection. A copy of the decision is here. Choudhury sued a yoga studio, Evolation Yoga, established by two former students, which offered hot read more…
New Zealand may have beaten France in the Rugby World Cup quarter finals, but one French sporting icon is winning a strategic branding war in New Zealand. For the third time in four years, the High Court of New Zealand has overturned the decision of the Assistant Commissioner of IPONZ and acknowledged the breadth of read more…
Last week, the Productivity Commission released the Issues Paper in accordance with its comprehensive review of Australia’s IP regime (Inquiry). In a previous post, we outlined the scope of the Inquiry and the key areas of the IP regime which the Federal Government had directed the Commission to examine and report on by August 2016. read more…
The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) was concluded on 5 October 2015, after 8 years of negotiations. Its twelve signatories, who together account for 40% of world GDP, are Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, United States and Vietnam. The details of the agreement have yet to be released, but a number read more…
Our European colleagues have summarised the recent decision of the European Court of Justice dealing with the EU-US privacy safe harbor. This is a big deal – the US Secretary of Commerce has been quoted as saying that the decision “puts at risk the thriving trans-Atlantic digital economy”. The plaintiff in the case, Mr Schrems, read more…
The High Court has handed down a significant decision finding that patent claims for isolated gene sequences, indicative of a predisposition to breast cancer, are not patentable subject matter. The decision can be found here (a one page summary has also been published by the High Court). The decision overturns the unanimous decision of the read more…
There has been a lot of talk lately about the “Dancing Baby” lawsuit (a.k.a Lenz v Universal Music Corp). For those readers who haven’t heard of the case, the basic story will be relatively familiar: a video, uploaded to YouTube, was then removed pursuant what is known as a “DMCA takedown notice” following an allegation read more…
The Federal Court of Australia has allowed Delfi Chocolate Manufacturing S.A.’s appeal of the opposition to its MALTITOS trade mark application by Mars Australia Pty Ltd. The MALTITOS trade mark was filed by Delfi Chocolate in Class 30 for ‘Confectionery; biscuits; chocolate; cocoa; products made from or including chocolate and/or cocoa’. Mars successfully opposed the read more…