Category Archives: Patents & Inventions

Louboutin vs Amazon: the Court of Justice clarifies the responsibility of the provider in case of infringement 

responsibility of the provider - Louboutin vs Amazon

The European Court of Justice by decision 22 December 2022 (joined cases C-148/21 and C-184/21) clarified the notion of “use” of a trademark on the online market, redefining the boundaries of the responsibility of the provider of the marketplace for the illicit use of the trademarks of others. The Court expressed itself following the referral […]

DABUS: the EPO on the possibility to name an Artificial Intelligence as inventor

artificial intelligence

On 14 September 2022, the European Bulletin reported the rejection of the patent application presented by Dr. Thaler, who indicated an artificial intelligence as inventor. DABUS is the name of the machine designed by the American scientist Dr. Stephen Thaler (acronym for device for the autonomous bootstrapping of unified sentience). The machine is composed by […]

Private investigations and unlawful processing of personal data: when is it a crime?

unlawful processing of personal data

With sentence n. 2243 of January 20th 2022, the Italian Supreme Court of Cassation retraced the changes to the types of crimes rendered by art. 167 of the Privacy Code (Legislative Decree 196/2003), clarifying in which cases the unlawful processing of personal data is now considered a criminal offence. The case concerned the investigation activities […]

Limitations and partial invalidity of a patent

partial invalidity of a patent

In a recent order (no. 3339 of December 1st 2021), the Italian Supreme Court of Cassation stated that a limitation of a patent, due to the lacking of inventive character of the main claim, implies  its partial invalidity. As in the case under exam, the limitation of the patent occurs when the main claim – […]