Canada: Trademark Filings Surge In 2017

Statistics released by the Canadian Intellectual Property Office and aggregated by IPPractice reveal that our IP group had a busy 2017: they filed more trademark applications than any other firm headquartered in Western Canada.  Their efforts placed Clark Wilson into the top 20 national filers for the first time, ranking six spots higher than the year prior.

This growth hasn’t come as a total surprise: Neil Melliship and Jeffrey Vicq, have been repeatedly  ranked as leading trade-mark practitioners by the prestigious international […]

By | March 12th, 2018 ||

Conflict Between IP Courts Of Milan And Rome: “Torpedo Action” Is Back (Maybe)

The deprecated slowness of the Italian Courts has caused the phenomenon of the so-called “Italian Torpedo Actions”1, in litigation having as object non-Italian patents.

To sum up: Torpedo Action usually amounts to non-infringement proceeding of a foreign patent brought before an Italian Court against a person not domiciled in Italy.

The jurisdiction of the Italian Court would be justified by applying art. 7 (2) of Reg. EU 1215/2012, that provides that “A person domiciled in a […]

By | March 10th, 2018 ||

Broad antibody claims under attack – USPTO issues memorandum raising written description requirements

Upon discovery of a novel biological target, an applicant may attempt to patent antibodies directed to the target, as such antibodies may have diagnostic and/or therapeutic applications. In the past, it has been possible to claim such antibodies in the US by merely stating that they are capable of binding the new biological target, and it was not necessary to characterise the structure or sequence of the antibody. Such an approach appears to be […]

By | March 8th, 2018 ||