Region: Italy

In early 2015 the Court of Milan issued several decisions concerning the application of Article 79 of the Industrial Property Code, which was amended in 2010. In some of these cases the court addressed whether and under what conditions a patent holder may reformulate a set of claims contained in a granted patent.

07 October 2015

A new Spanish patent act will come into force on 1st April 2017, following its recent publication in the country’s Official Gazette. There is a detailed look at all the major provisions in the legislation over on the PatLit blog, but what looks to…

03 August 2015

A recent Italian Patent and Trademark Office decision to register a trademark consisting of two complex Chinese characters was based on the distinctiveness of two Chinese characters. However, this distinctiveness is questionable.

22 July 2015

In a recent decision the Court of Turin held that when technical information meets all of the requirements for trade secret protection and reverse engineering is difficult, the burden of proof rests with the defendant to show that the technical information was acquired independently.

01 July 2015

Recently Italy indicated that, following the CJEU’s decision that the creation of the EU’s unitary patent and unified patent court (UPC) did not breach European law, it will be signing up to the system. Should this happen, it will leave Spain as the…

22 June 2015

In the past, the close connection between intellectual property and life sciences has been based almost exclusively on patent protection. The patenting of pharmaceutical discoveries has turned relatively small scientific-based businesses into…

17 June 2015

The Criminal Division of the Court of Cassation recently ruled in <i>Metro-Goldwin-Mayer v Iervolino</i>, holding that a three-dimensional reproduction of a two-dimensional trademark constituted trademark infringement. The ruling is expected to harmonise earlier conflicting decisions on this issue.

10 June 2015

The Court of Milan has held the Italian portion of a European patent invalid because the claims extended beyond the content of the original application as filed. This ground for invalidation was submitted after the deadline set for such submissions; however, the court concluded that new grounds which were not initially presented may be added under certain conditions.

13 May 2015

The Supreme Court recently ruled on the issue of secondary meaning. The judgment may lead to further developments on two key issues: the extent of the protection of weak signs, and the application of secondary meaning as a remedy to strengthen the distinctive character of such signs.

08 April 2015

The European Court of Justice has clarified whether certain active ingredients in medicinal products are eligible for supplementary protection certificate (SPC) protection. The court ruled that the relevant EU legislation contains no prohibition against obtaining an SPC for an active ingredient which is covered by a basic patent and which is covalently bound to another active ingredient in a medicinal product.

11 March 2015