The UK’s people have voted, but it will be a long time before Brexit is effectuated . Let´s see… Anyway, what would that mean for your IP/IT? Here is a very first analysis in a nutshell:
Patents
Good news first: Nothing will change for European Patents (EPs). EPs are not under […]
For the first time .at domain names may be registered with just one or two digits, so for example 12.at, A1.at or Ö3.at, 3.at. All combinations of all letters, numbers and mutated vowels are possible, resulting in a total number of 4965 new domain names
Sunrise Period for Trademark Owners
For […]
On 19 April 2016, the General Court of the European Union (“GCEU”) came to interesting conclusions in Case T-326/14 – Joker vs Hot Joker with regard to the similarities of goods. In this case, the GCEU considered “hardware and software” in class 9 to be confusingly similar to “games” […]
The new “Community Trademark Regulation”, which was passed on 16/12/2015, enters into force! There are many “technical” changes, which will keep us trademark attorneys busy for years to come. For trademark owners, there are a few issues notable right now:
From March 23, 2016 onwards, the Community Trademark will be […]
Rainer Schultes and Alexander Schnider of GEISTWERT will speak respectively about “Early Protection of Know How and IP Rights” and “Common Legal Pitfalls in Starting-Up a Business” at UIA’s seminar Current Trends in Start-Ups and Crowd Financing which will be held in Vienna from March 10 to March 12.
Further […]
Since its formation in 2005, the international Client Choice Ranking Directory gave the “Intellectual Property – Patents: Austria 2016” award to a woman for the first time, namely to GEISTWERT partner Juliane Messner. In 2014 and 2015, GEISTWERT partners Alexander Schnider and Constantin Kletzer received this distinction.
On 28 January 2016, the German Supreme Court (Bundesgerichtshof, “BGH”) decided a dispute between “wetter.de” [= “weather.de”], a domain- and App-name, and the owner of wetter.at [= “weather.at”] who equally launched an App called “wetter-de”, “wetter DE” and “wetter-DE” (BGH, 28 January 2016, I ZR 202/14). As both parties offered […]
On February 2, 2016 EU Commission and United States agreed on a new framework for transatlantic data flows: EU-US Privacy Shield.
This new framework shall protect the fundamental rights of Europeans when their data is transferred to the United States and ensure legal certainty for businesses. Wheter or not this is true […]