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UPC update - Germany's Constitutional Court says Germany's UPC ratification is void - is this the final nail in the UPC coffin? ... and an opportunity for the UK? In previous posts here and here we have looked at the so-called demise of the Unified Patent Court (UPC) and the Unitary Patent (UP) from the UK perspective, especially in the post-Brexit intellectual property landscape.   Now it is Germany's turn to take...
Manual records and personal data – a more helpful line drawn by the Court of Appeal Despite the increase in paperless offices, many businesses still struggle with ensuring their manual records comply with EU and UK data protection laws. One key question to ask at the outset is, of course, whether those manual records even amount to...
Fiscal responses to COVID-19 As countries ramp up social distancing measures to combat COVID-19, the economic costs of the virus spiral and the G7 leaders have called on their central banks and finance ministers to take action to support economic and financial stability. In addition...
RIP to the Australian innovation patent Three weeks ago, after threatening to do so for years, the Australian Parliament quietly passed a bill to phase out the Australian "second-tier" innovation patent. As a result, this tech-friendly tool used to protect incremental innovations, will no...
UK presses ahead with digital services tax At a time when the priority for the UK government (after dealing with COVID-19, obviously) should be securing a good trade deal with the US, it appears a risky negotiation tactic to introduce a digital services tax (DST) to which the US has made its...
UK presses ahead with digital services tax At a time when the priority for the UK government (after dealing with COVID-19, obviously) should be securing a good trade deal with the US, it appears a risky negotiation tactic to introduce a digital services tax (DST) to which the US has made its...
Withholding tax on cross-border payments The Parent Subsidiary Directive (PSD) and the Interest and Royalties Directive (IRD) provide an EU law route for relieving withholding tax on certain cross-border payments.  How might this change in the future – and what has changed already? Payments from...
Digital technologies take top spot in EU patent applications in 2019 The European Patent Office (EPO) has recently published its Patent Index 2019 which analyses patent filing trends in 2019.  Tech patent owners will be interested to know that digital technologies, especially 5G and AI, were the most prevalent fields for...
What should you do to combat the new COVID-19 cyber risk? Organisations grappling with a variety of issues raised by the coronavirus should ensure that ‘increased cyber risk’ is on the list of new risks to manage. In response, the UK’s national cyber security centre (the NCSC)  published guidance yesterday which...
UPC update - clarification of UK non involvement sought from new IP Minister We recently reported that the UK is no longer intending to participate in the EU’s Unified Patent Court (UPC) and Unitary Patent (UP) system, due to the irreconcilable differences between the UK and EU as to the role of the Court of Justice of the EU...