News

The UK will formally leave the EU on 31 January 2020 but under the terms of the Withdrawal Agreement agreed between the UK and the EU this will commence a transition period until at least 31 December 2020. There will be no legal effect of Brexit on statutory IP rights until the end of the […]

Cosmetics and personal care brands are increasingly selecting short, snappy and simplistic trade marks to capture consumers’ attention in a saturated market. The digital age continually presents new challenges, prompting brands to shift their focus from traditional over-the-shelf transactions to the multi-dimensional online realm in which endorsements by social media influencers and hashtag led marketing […]

What are the benefits? When I talk to product or brand designers who haven’t concerned themselves much with Intellectual Property (IP) rights, be it manufacturers of consumer products, or designers themselves, they quite rightly want to know why it’s worth spending the money to get rights registered. Some designers consider IP purely a client problem, […]

According to market research, the global cosmetics industry is forecast to be worth $675 billion by 2020. However, the trend for bloggers and social media influencers to actively encourage consumers to buy cheap copies of higher-end products known as “dupes” has made creating and maintaining a strong, cosmetics brand particularly challenging.  Dupes tend to have […]

The UK Supreme Court has handed down their judgement in Shanks v Unilever [2019] UKSC 45 (found here)  in which they considered the issue of employee compensation, and under what circumstances would an employee be entitled to further compensation for an invention they had invented as part of their normal duties. The decision of the […]

A recent case (T1003/19) has highlighted what can go wrong at the grant stage of a European patent, but gives hope for applicants that have not checked the text intended for grant as closely as they might have done. The decision by the Board of Appeal essentially found that if there is enough evidence that […]