Intellectual property

A Court of Appeal judge has lamented the ‘very concerning’ state of the law on employee inventor compensation after a chemist’s case took five-and-a-half years to reach court, eventually being listed for a 37-day trial next year

Lara Elder explores a modern-day conundrum facing the authorial estates of the classics

Consumers were confused by the branding similarities between two florists, the Intellectual Property Enterprise Court has held

Blur drummer turned solicitor David Rowntree has lost his claim on behalf of 160,000 musicians regarding the distribution of £200m ‘black box’ or unidentified royalties to producers but not songwriters

A sprawling Intellectual Property Office battle between House of Fraser and Frasers Property has delivered a masterclass in modern trade mark law

A recent decision has demonstrated, all in one go, UK trade mark principles in action: Maria-Christina Peyman sets out the key takeaways for practitioners

Roger Lush & Lara Elder examine the state of UK and EU trade mark law, ten years post-Brexit

Ten years after Brexit, UK and EU trade mark regimes are drifting apart in practice if not principle. Writing in NLJ this week, Roger Lush and Lara Elder of Carpmaels & Ransford highlight tighter UK scrutiny after SkyKick, where overly broad filings may signal ‘bad faith’

Teenage darts star Luke (The Nuke) Littler has applied to trademark his face in an attempt to thwart deepfake exploitation

The Supreme Court has drawn a firm line under branding creativity in regulated markets. In Dairy UK Ltd v Oatly AB, it ruled that Oatly’s ‘post-milk generation’ trade mark unlawfully deployed a protected dairy designation. In NLJ this week, Asima Rana of DWF explains that the court prioritised ‘regulatory clarity over creative branding choices’, holding that ‘designation’ extends beyond product names to marketing slogans