Lord Justice Arnold is renowned in the UK and the EU for his judicial contributions to the field of intellectual property (IP), and currently sits as a Justice of Appeal in the England and Wales Court of Appeal. As a judge, he has made 14 referrals to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) between 2004 and 20191. […] Read More

The growing digital landscape indeed imposes new questions and challenges for legislators and courts when adopting and adapting intellectual property law. For example, when artworks located in public outdoor spaces are published online (without the right holder’s consent), a reasonable balance between intellectual property protection and other interests, such as the free use of the internet, should be ensured. In […] Read More

A minimum degree of similarity among goods (and services) is required for a global appreciation of likelihood of confusion to be carried out under EU trade mark law. The CJEU clarified already back in the 1990’s what factors could be relevant when the similarity-test is carried out, but has never really further elaborated on the similarity-test. The assessment of whether […] Read More

Recent developments in technology are leading to the production of machines with the intellectual capacity to create and invent, just like humans. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is challenging copyright and patent law, as the actual author and inventor is no longer a natural person, but a machine. This article focuses on creative and innovative outputs generated autonomously by AI and scrutinises […] Read More

The current legal climate does not yet provide sufficient clarity on the workings, limits and rights conferred through licences granted on Free Open Source Software (FOSS). Generally, copyright is accepted as applying to FOSS and therefore the granted licence; by contrast, whether patents on the computer implemented invention (CII) encompassed in the software are implicitly licensed as well, is less […] Read More