In 2011, the European Council authorized enhanced cooperation between member states in a view of creating a single European Patent. Spain and Italy refused to participate and requested the Court of Justice to annul the Council’s decision. The ECJ has dismissed their request noting, that the EU is authorized to create European-wide intellectual property rights [...]

Mark Cohen, a Visiting Professor at Fordham University School of Law, publishes ChinaIPR.com, a highly informative blog that, in Cohen’s words, “aims to provide access to information, news and events related to IP development in China.”  As his blog readily displays, Cohen is one of the West’s leading experts on all things China IP-related.  He [...]

In this South China Morning Post article, Benjamin Bai and Jae Zhou challenge the view traditionally espoused in the West that China lacks the ability to innovate, a view that often emphasizes China’s reliance on low-skill manufacturing and duplication of imported creations. Bai and Zhou argue, however, that China “has been on a course to transform [...]

At the end of February, Google and Spain’s data protection authority, the Spanish Data Protection Agency (AEPD), came head-to-head in the European Court of Justice. As European data protection efforts continue to zero in on search engines, this will be one of the most hotly anticipated decisions around the world (for those of us interested [...]

Last week’s Supreme Court decision in Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. left many IP geeks like myself scratching our heads.  On Tuesday, the Court, led by Justice Breyer, held that the first sale doctrine applies to copyrighted goods “lawfully made” abroad. For some background, Supap Kirtsaeng was a student from Thailand who moved to [...]

The granting of exclusionary rights to the inventor/author lies at the heart of intellectual property law. Since the development of antitrust law and the ever-increasing grants of patents and copyright protection, tensions exist between the interfaces of these two areas of law.  Society has addressed these tensions in a variety of ways and one of [...]

After more than 30 years of negotiation, the European Parliament recently approved three proposals aimed to establish a unitary patent system for member states of the European Union.  These proposals involve a unitary patent that would be valid across 25 EU member states (the only countries not included are Spain and Italy).  Such unitary patents [...]

Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) sitting in an extraordinary meeting backed the latest agreement between member state representatives in relation to the Unified European Patent System.  Concerns with regards to the location of the specialized European Patent Court as well as the role of the ECJ in patent cases in the future were addressed, [...]

Did you ever wonder why you don’t hear the gentle knock of government agents at your door soon after selling something, like your used Twilight DVD, on eBay or Amazon?  No, there’s no law against bad taste, but have you ever considered you could be infringing on someone’s copyright?  If not, don’t worry; Congress has [...]

During the week of October 15th, as the future of the European Union hangs on by a thread, the EU will celebrate the 20th anniversary of the European Single Market, marking the historic achievement with a week of festivities in Brussels. The Single Market  not only changed the everyday lives of Europeans but radically altered [...]