As 2021 begins, it seems to be an appropriate time to look back on one of the most extraordinary years of our lives. In this article, we provide a brief overview of some of the top intellectual property stories of 2020 that may be of interest to our Chinese and British readers.
In todays’ decision in Illumina v Latvia MGI, Birss J has made the first application of the sufficiency principles from the Supreme Court’s decision in Regeneron to process claims in a case relating to DNA sequencing technology.
Following a 2019 decision by the Court of Appeal to remit this copyright ownership and infringement case back to the High Court for a retrial, former couple Nick Martin & Julia Kogan once again clashed before Meade J over the authorship of the screenplay for the 2016 Hollywood film “Florence Foster Jenkins”.
With the Brexit transition period drawing to an end, this decision constitutes the last Community design case before the UK courts and represents a rare success story for a claimant in asserting infringement of a registered design.
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.
According to the European Patent Office (EPO) annual report 2020, 1,912 opposition cases were decided in 2020: 31% of patents were upheld as granted, 35% of patents were revoked and 34% of patents were maintained in an amended form. However, in 2020 37% of these decisions were appealed.