Knowledge Hub

In a disappointing end to the long running defence of its registrations for the colours blue and silver, Red Bull’s EU trade marks have finally been declared invalid. On 29 July 2019 the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) finally put an end to Red Bull’s five year battle to defend its EU… Read more »

Nine years running… On Tuesday 16th July, a team of willing and enthusiastic runners from AA Thornton took part in the Standard Chartered Great City Race.   This is an annual 5km road race around closed off streets of the City of London which this year had a record 5,592 participants all helping to raise… Read more »

New Patent Rules in Canada from 30 October 2019 Amendments published recently will bring Canadian Patent Rules into conformity with the Patent Law Treaty and thus into line with the majority of patent laws in force around the world. The full text of the revised rules can be found here.  A summary of the main… Read more »

Stuart Greenwood summarises the revisions of the Rules of Procedure of the Boards of Appeal which will come into force on 1 January 2020 This article was updated on 15th August 2019. In an effort to “increase efficiency” the EPO’s Administrative Council recently approved amendments to the Rules of Procedure of the Boards of Appeal… Read more »

Sarah Neil serves up four delicious courses which stretch the boundaries of Intellectual Property in the food industry Here at AAT we love food. Not only do we love eating food, we love cooking food, thinking about food and talking about food. We also love combining food with our other passion: IP. In recent years,… Read more »

AA Thornton team welcomes year 12 students into the world of IP This week we were delighted to welcome a group of year 12 students from St Marylebone School into our London office as part of our IP Inclusive initiative to raise the profile of the various careers in the Intellectual Property industry.  We spent… Read more »

Olympics Games organisers issue strict guidelines for Tokyo 2020 The Tokyo Organising Committee of the Olympics and Paralympic Games (TOC) have issued brand protection guidelines in relation to the 32nd Summer Olympic Games next year.  A link to the document is set out below and the key elements to avoid are set out in the… Read more »

The New SPC Manufacturing Waiver Regulation Today, 1 July 2019,  a new EU Regulation No 2019/933 (the ‘Regulation’) amending the current SPC Regulation 469/2009 comes into force. This introduces limitations to the extent of SPC protection in respect of certain acts carried out in relation to the export of a medicinal product to a non-EU… Read more »

In this article Partner Ian Gill discusses the upcoming changes to Chinese Trade Mark Legislation regarding bad faith and the impact this is likely to have on trade mark owners   China’s revised trade mark legislation, effective from 1 November 2019, has a number of changes that will be welcomed by foreign companies operating in… Read more »

The majority of the world’s biggest selling medicines can be classified as “biologics” or “biopharmaceuticals”. Such medicines contain one or more biologically active product produced from (or containing components of) living organisms as the active ingredients.   Biosimilars are biological products which are highly similar in structure, biological activity, efficacy, safety and immunogenicity profile to… Read more »