Way more than an everyday interest in IP
On 24 April 2020, Justice Perram of the Federal Court of Australia gave judgment in relation to a copyright dispute concerning the iconic Australian pop-hit classic, Love is in the Air, finding that a substantial part of the song had been copied by a US pop-duo, Glass Candy, and by France’s national airline, Air France, read more...
We can all be guilty of promising more than we can deliver – but for a patentee, that can be fatal for the validity of your patent. Under Australian patent law, inventions must be ‘useful’ in order to be patentable, and one of the complex elements of this requirement is whether any promises made with read more...
A decision in June by Canada’s Supreme Court in Google Inc. v. Equustek Solutions Inc., 2017 SCC 34 has ordered Google to de-list certain unlawful websites from its search results worldwide. The decision has sparked immediate debate about the implications of such global takedowns on freedom of speech and on the power of Internet intermediaries. read more...Yesterday the Productivity Commission published its final report on Australia’s IP system. Our high level summary of the Commission’s recommendations across all aspects of the IP system can be found here. The Commission sees the patent system as tipped in favour of patent owners and its recommendations are designed to restore balance. This post provides read more...Today, the Productivity Commission has released its draft report into Australia’s intellectual property arrangements. IP Whiteboard readers may recall that last year, the Federal Government asked the Productivity Commission to undertake a comprehensive review of Australia’s intellectual property system (see our previous post here). At 600 pages, the draft report is certainly comprehensive! We have read more...
This question is often asked by companies considering ways to funnel internet traffic to their own website by diverting internet users seeking to access a competitor’s website. A single judge of the Federal Court has found that the use of a competitor’s trade mark as a keyword in Google AdWords is neither trade mark infringement 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...
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...The Federal Court of Australia has granted preliminary discovery in L’Oréal Australia Pty Ltd v BrandPoint Pty Ltd [2015] FCA 978 with respect to product claims made in relation to the PuraSonic facial cleansing brush. Immortalised by Justice Beach as “a product marketed to the fairer sex with the allure of its miraculous transformational properties”, the read more...
