Alibaba Files Trademark Suit Against AlibabaCoin Cryptocurrency

This week, Chinese e-commerce company, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, sued a company called Alibabacoin for “prominent, repeated, and intentionally misleading” use of its trademarks in its effort to raise more than $3 million in cryptocurrency called “AlibabaCoins.”

Alibaba accuses Alibabacoin, which is also known as ABBC Foundation, of operating an “unlawful scheme to misappropriate”Alibaba’s brand name. CoinDesk  reports the complaint reads:

“Rather than build independent value in their brand and the products and services they offer, Defendants have engaged in a willful and concerted […]

By | April 24th, 2018 ||

Presentations Of Information At The EPO

In November last year, the EPO updated the Guidelines for Examination in relation to presentations of information, which includes Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) (see sections G-II, 3.7 and 3.7.1). This provides a useful consolidation of their current approach to such inventions.

As will be familiar to users of the EPO, when assessing patentability of patent applications in this area, the claimed subject-matter is considered as a whole to determine if it has technical character and […]

By | April 24th, 2018 ||

At The EPO : Slow And Steady Wins The Race

At the present time, the average duration of the examination procedure before the European Patent Office (EPO) is 23.2 months1. The examination time period should be reduced to 12 months by 20202. The decreasing duration of the examination procedure comes under criticisms from some applicants. According to its detractors, the faster procedure would prevent applicants from raising funds or submitting complementary data during the examination phase. The EPO acknowledged those observations and suggested to […]

By | April 17th, 2018 ||