Category: News

This coming Wednesday and Thursday, May 11-12, we invite you to Katowice, where the international trade fair of inventions and innovation INTARG 2022 will be held in the famous Spodek Arena.

The event will be attended by Grzegorz Wodecki, Patpol patent specialist and Jakub Słupski, advocate at Patpol Legal.

The trade fair will be a perfect opportunity to talk about intellectual property and discuss legal aspects of business. Therefore, we invite you to our stand and also to the lecture “How can an innovative enterprise protect its intellectual property?”, which will be delivered by Jakub Słupski on the first event day, namely on May 11 at 1:00 pm in the Presentation Zone.

We are looking forward to seeing you there!

[Author: Nina Jankowska, Trademark and Design Attorney]

Agreements concerning industrial property rights are more and more frequently found on our desks. In recent years, we have noticed a popularization of ways of amicable dispute resolution in trademark conflicts.

Approximately 13,000 trademarks are filed each year in Poland and the number of active rights at the end of 2020 was 155,000. The number of applications accepted by the European Union Intellectual Property Office (abbreviated as EUIPO) is even higher and increases year by year. In 2020, it was 177,000 applications, and in 2021 it will already be 197,000. This gives more than 2 million trademarks listed by the EUIPO.

It will certainly not come as a surprise that the increasing number of applications leads to an increasing number of disputes. After all, the more applications there are, the easier it is to spot similar trademarks.

What the statistics say

 The EUIPO receives an average of 1,500 oppositions to trademark applications per month, which amounts to approximately 18,000 oppositions per year. Statistics show that as many as 12,000 disputes are settled without a decision on the merits by the office, which means that up to 66% of disputes are settled by agreement between the parties.

The Polish Patent Office declared that 660 trademark oppositions were filed in 2020. This is 10% more than last year. Unfortunately, the Polish office does not publish statistics on how disputes are resolved, but my conversations with colleagues indicate that between 40-65% of cases end with an agreement. In my cases, the estimate is even higher and amounts to 70% of cases. I have included 27 opposition cases from recent years in this calculation.

On the basis of these estimates, it is possible to draw a conclusion about the increasing use of industrial property rights agreements and trademark coexistence agreements.

Continue reading on the official website by The Trademark Lawyer Magazine

Monika Zielińska, attorney at law and patent attorney, in the video for news agency Newseria Biznes explains the following:

• Why brands choose to protect their trademarks in virtual world,
• When it is worth taking care of one’s own intellectual property protection in metaverse,
• Whether or not it is a good decision to use a registered trademark only in virtual space.

We invite you to watch a video with an interview.

Author: Olimpia Misztal, assistant in Patent Department

On the 14^th April, every year, in the calendar of unusual days there is the Day of Looking at the Sky. When we lie down on the grass and look at the sky, not only on the 14^th April ?, we will occasionally see a bird or a plane passing by. Mostly, however, we?ll see the blue and some clouds. We will try to find fun shapes in them and watch as they flow across the sky moved by the wind. Although, while lying on the grass we may not feel gusts of air the clouds visible to us may be rushing by. This difference occurs due to the fact that the higher you go, the further from the Earth?s surface, the faster winds usually blow.

This dependence has been noticed as early as the 9^th century in Persia, where windmills were first invented. A windmill uses the force of the wind acting on the blades to make them rotate. The kinetic energy generated this way is then used to move other elements inside a windmill, for example: to grind grain, crush stones, pump water, etc.

So the windmill (as an invention) has been known to mankind for centuries. The modern use of a windmill as a source of the renewable energy came on much later, only when the electric generator was invented. It was the Scottish inventor, James Blyth, who combined the kinetic energy created by a windmill with an electric generator and created the first wind turbine (patented in 1891). He used it just for his own needs, powering his home with the energy provided by his invention.

Continue reading on IP-Blog.pl

Author: Barbara Milczarek, patent attorney

It was already back in the 19^th century when the practice of patenting started to deal with inventions in the field of biotechnology. It is assumed that the first biotechnological invention to have been patented was an American patent granted in 1873 in the name of Ludvik Pasteur, which concerned the method of improving the process of brewing beer and ale.

It is believed that modern biotechnology was originated by the discovery and creation in 1953 of the model of spatial structure of DNA, which is the carrier of genetic information contained within DNA sequences (genes). Owing to development of molecular biology, it became possible to identify not only the respective DNA sequences and their biological functions, but also to isolate the particular genes, and then introduce these isolated genes from one organism to the genome of another organism and to make its reproduction (for example, by way of cloning) in order to obtain a particular protein substance. As it can be expected, in the beginnings the genetic modifications consisting in introduction of external genes concerned microorganisms, mainly bacteria. As soon as the new improved strains of bacteria had been obtained, there appeared the desire to have them patented, which in turn initiated the dispute about biotechnology in the context of patent law.

Continue reading on IP-Blog.pl

Are the trends about to change for patent application filing in Poland?

Agata Granis-Rafferty, Polish and European Patent Attorney at Patpol, predicts the impact that the unitary patent will have on filing trends at the Polish Patent Office in a recent article by The Patent Lawyer Magazine.

We invite you to read the full article online.

How introduction of Unitary Patent in Europe will impact patent filing numbers before the Polish Patent Office?

Unitary patent in Europe will commence by the end of 2022. Unitary Patent will enable obtaining patent protection in up to 25 EPC Member States by submitting a single request to the EPO. Unitary Patent is aimed at removing the necessity of national validation procedures in the contracting states. Infringement and validity of Unitary Patents, as well as, European patents will be concluded by a special Unified Patent Court. Although 25 EU Member States are currently participating in the Unitary Patent scheme, Unitary Patents registered at the outset will not cover all 25  territories, because some states have not yet ratified the Unified Patent Court Agreement (UPCA). Poland signed Protocol on enhanced cooperation, but is not a party to UPCA. This means that Poland is not among member states in which Unitary patent will have a legal effect. However, this does not prevent Polish companies from applying for unitary patent, however if any applicant or patent proprietor wishes to have protection in Poland, it can be achieved via validation of classic European Patent or by filing a national patent application or by entering with PCT application into national phase in Poland.

European patent is definitely the preferred option for obtaining patent protection in Poland. Since Poland?s accession to the European Patent Convention (EPC), a number of the European patents in force in Poland has grown significantly from 12 European patents in 2005 to 83 800 European patents in 2020. Never before Poland has had such a high number of patents in force. The validated European patents outnumber the patents granted directly with the Polish Patent Office, whose number in 2020 amounted only to 18 731. These high numbers of validated European patents not only correspond to an increasing number of European patents granted every year by the EPO, but also show that many patent proprietors want to protect their inventions in Poland and are willing to invest in EP patent translations, which are necessary for patent validation in Poland.

Continue reading

We are happy to return to meetings with our clients and partners during stationary events. In exactly one week we will appear at the 9th International Congress of Family Businesses.

Patpol and Patpol Legal are pleased to be the thematic partner of the event.

The congress is organized by Instytut Biznesu Rodzinnego.

See you at the panel session led by Joanna Piłka and Dariusz Piróg.

We are very happy to announce that in the prestigious WTR 1000 2022  ranking, our firm received a golden award in the “Prosecution and strategy” category.

The justification for the recommendation emphasized experience and effectiveness of Patpol attorneys in the field of administrative proceedings regarding the protection of intellectual property for Polish and international companies, as well as the successes of Patpol Legal lawyers, including in matters of parallel import for large entities.

Congratulations to the whole team – the award would not be possible without your commitment, knowledge and determination.

We also thank our clients for their trust and recommendations, on the basis of which the ranking is created.

Źródło: https://www.worldtrademarkreview.com/rankings/wtr-1000/profile/firm/patpol-european-and-polish-patent-and-trademark-attorneys