Posts in International

How Brazil is Preparing for the Global Transformation in Connectivity

The world is increasingly connected, and semiconductors are essential to enabling this connectivity. Specialists project the semiconductor market to become a trillion-dollar industry by 2030 (McKinsey & Co., 2022). The term “semiconductors” covers a large amount of embedded technology that is advancing rapidly in its development. Semiconductor companies are highly innovative and rely on innovation to maintain their market share and expansion objectives. An indicator of innovation in this sector is, of course, patents. Of the 10 largest semiconductor companies, according to a ranking published by Investopedia in April 2023, five companies filed between 2,000 to 5,000 patent families between 2019 and 2022

EU SEP Regulation Update: Reenvisaging the European ‘FRANDscape’

On  April 27, 2023, the European Commission published its proposal for how the licensing of standard essential patents (SEPs) should be governed in the EU. The draft regulation states that the initiative aims to incentivize participation by European firms in the standard development process and the broad implementation of such standardized technologies, particularly in IoT industries. The developments are of interest to any business that develops, implements or markets connective technologies.

ITC Report on TRIPS COVID IP Waiver Extension Plays it Safe

The U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) released a sprawling report on Tuesday analyzing market dynamics surrounding the question of whether to extend the waiver of IP rights for COVID-19 technologies under the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) to diagnostics and therapeutics. The report stopped short of making any recommendations, but ultimately did not find any definitive evidence that IP rights present a barrier to access in the context of COVID diagnostics and therapeutics. However, it largely amounts to a reiteration of talking points on both sides and seemingly does little to further the debate.

Trader Joe’s Charges Crypto Company with Fraud, Trademark Infringement/Dilution

A trademark lawsuit filed by popular grocery store chain, Trader Joe’s, against a cryptocurrency platform called “Trader Joe”—which the complaint alleges is a deliberate reference to the supermarket—has come to light this week. Trader Joe’s claims that the crypto firm buried its origin story in order to win international litigation over the domain name, traderjoexyz.com. Trader Joe’s has offered grocery services under the mark TRADER JOE’S for more than 50 years. According to the lawsuit, a co-founder of the crypto company Trader Joe, going by the handle “cryptofish,” admitted in a Substack publication that the company’s name originally derived from the name of the Trader Joe’s supermarket chain.

Is the United States’ Nonobviousness Test ‘Plausibly’ Similar to the EPO/UK Inventive Step Standard?

Recent cases in the European Patent Office (EPO), the UK, and United States illustrate substantive differences between these jurisdictions as they continue to develop their inventive step/nonobviousness frameworks. In particular, the EPO and UK have recently provided guidance on a concept known as “plausibility,” i.e., whether the scope of the patent must be justified by the patentee’s technical contribution to the art in solving an identified problem. “If it is not plausible that the invention solves any technical problem then the patentee has made no technical contribution and the invention does not involve an inventive step.” Sandoz Limited v. Bristol-Meyers Squibb Holdings [2023] EWCA Civ 472. That standard, however, is quite dissimilar from the United States’ statutory standard of whether “the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art are such that the claimed invention as a whole would have been obvious…”

Brazilian Court Enforces Preliminary Injunction Against Netflix

Digital video company, DivX, scored a win in a Brazilian court after a judge ratified its expert report and enforced a previously-granted preliminary injunction against Netflix. DivX sued Netflix for infringement of its Patent No. PI 0506163-6, which is directed to a “deblocking” tool implemented in High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC)-encoded files. According to DivX, Netflix’s streaming in HEVC infringes the patent.