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Standard Essential Patents and FRAND Licences

The most common licensing model for Standard Essential Patents (SEPs) is to license the SEP on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms. A Standard Setting Organisation usually requires an undertaking that any patents which cover the technical specification of a standard will be licensed on FRAND terms. Even if a direct competitor is using the technology, the patent owner cannot simply enforce the patent via infringement proceedings to obtain an injunction in the usual manner.

IP Law Europe Summit May 2021 - Online

Former Accenture patent attorney to head new Secerna Dublin office

Intellectual property law firm Secerna LLP is preparing for the next phase of growth, opening a Dublin office headed by former Accenture in-house counsel Dermot Roche.

T‑515/19 LEGO Decision

LEGO Secures Design Rights Victory: The European General Court upholds LEGO's intellectual property claim for its iconic 4x3 plate block. Learn how this legal win impacts design rights, patent law, and trademark protection in the toy industry.

Intellectual Property and Equitable Access to COVID-19 Technologies

Intellectual Property and Equitable Access to COVID-19 Technologies

G 1/19 Decision

The Enlarged Board of Appeal (EBA) of the European Patent Office (EPO) recently published its decision, G 1/19, on several matters of law regarding the patentability of computer-implemented simulations and the assessment of inventive step thereof. In short, the Enlarged Board has reaffirmed, and expanded upon, the precedent established by the 2002 Board of Appeal (BoA) decision T 0641/00, best known as ‘COMVIK’, which set out the so-called ‘Comvik approach’, a nuance of the EPO’s problem-solution approach that stipulates that non-technical elements of an invention cannot be considered when assessing the inventiveness of that invention.

Secerna attracts top new talent as growth curve continues

Intellectual property specialist Secerna LLP has welcomed a new trainee patent attorney to its team in York, bolstering the firm’s robotics, physics and electronics expertise.

Plant Variety Rights “post-Brexit”

Whilst patents in Europe may be granted with claims to plants at a high taxonomic level (e.g. that embrace individual plant varieties), Article 53(b) EPC excludes from patentability any claims directed to individual plant varieties or essentially biological processes for the production of plants [1]. Instead, plant variety rights are available to protect this form of IP.

Daniel Pingstone in profile