Category: Intellectual Property

Trademark

Specsavers Trademark Application Approved

The UK’s Intellectual Property Office (“IPO”) has approved Specsavers’ application to trademark the terms “should’ve” and “shouldve” to protect its well-known catchphrase., Specsavers had filed an application with the “IPO seeking a trademark over the two words ‘should’ve’ and ‘shouldve’ which the company has been regularly using as part of their slogan campaign “Should’ve gone…

Scrabble fails to stop Scramble in trademark dispute

Scrabble fails to stop Scramble in trademark dispute

Scrabble argued that the use of the word Scramble, and the presentation of the word in the game’s logo, with the ‘M’ turned on its side so as to look like a capital letter B, would cause game players to confuse it with their own name, and therefore assume the two games were associated. They…

Glass Manufacturer granted injunction to protect design rights

Glass Manufacturer granted injunction to protect design rights

The court heard that Utopia Tableware Ltd had registered and unregistered design rights over its Aspen range of glasses, which were characterised by being tall and having a narrow waist towards the centre. The glasses were used by some major brewing companies. Utopia objected when another manufacturer started producing glasses which were very similar in…

Premium 90-day patent application service to be introduced

Premium 90-day patent application service to be introduced

There will also be a faster trademarks service which will provide a full examination report in five days instead of the current 10 days. The changes, which will be introduced by the Intellectual Property Office (IPO), were announced in a speech by the Business Secretary Vince Cable. He said there would also be a range…

EU leaders agree on Unified Patent Court with UK section

EU leaders agree on Unified Patent Court with UK section

The court will be based in Paris but will have a London section covering cases involving pharmaceutical and life science issues. There will also be a section in Munich covering engineering and resources. Business Secretary Vince Cable said: “The deal means for the first time a single patent will be valid across 25 European countries….

New measures to make international patent applications faster

New measures to make international patent applications faster

The changes affect the UK’s fast track system and will allow applicants to make changes to an international application while still being able to request accelerated processing in the UK. The IPO says this will remove a bureaucratic hurdle and increase the flexibility of the patent application process. The changes are part of a wider…