Posts Tagged: "TRIPS Agreement"

The major premise of plain packaging is that when stripped of producers’ logos, brand images and promotional matter, tobacco products simply aren’t as attractive to consumers. Reduced focus on logos and images also increases the effectiveness of health warnings. Chan points to research from Australia, the first country to fully implement plain packaging, to show that by stripping tobacco products of gratuitous trademarks and other producer advertising elements, there were 100,000 fewer smokers over the first 34 months after implementation in 2012. Not all groups agree, however.

After several years of negotiations between the Kosovo government and the European Commission, the Stabilization and Association Agreement (SAA) entered into force on April 1, 2016. The entry into force of the SAA is an important development for Kosovo since this constitutes the first contractual relationship between Kosovo and the European Union. The SAA includes several chapters on various political and economic issues as well as provisions aiming to promote EU standards in many areas, including intellectual property. I will first highlight the main provisions of the SAA concerning IP rights and compare them with the respective provisions in a few other SAAs that the EU signed with other countries in the region. I will then analyze what the entry into force of the SAA means for the Kosovo government in terms of IP protection and how this development will positively affect trademark holders and IP practitioners.

Open licenses are private arrangements that work within the current legal regime to encourage innovation, discourage trolls, and help attract top engineering talent. It is a win-win solution for different patenting companies and user’s society. There are several different types of most common open licenses. A License of Transfer Agreement (or shortly, a LOT agreement), that helps to prevent legal suits from non-practicing entities that purchase patents for the sole purpose of enforcing them (called Patent Assertion Entities, or PAEs). Under the LOT Agreement, every company that participates, grants a license to the other participants where the license becomes effective only when patents are transferred to non-participants.