Never Too Late: If you missed the IPKat last week!

[Simone Lorenzi]

Never Too Late: If you missed the IPKat last week!

 Simone Lorenzi Friday, August 08, 2025 - copyright, event report, IP, IPKat readers, never too late, patents, plant varieties, Simone Lorenzi, trade marks

Your essential weekly guide to IP insights from the IPKat!

Copyright

Looks like our Kat is taking a deep dive into the legal intricacies of the week!

Katfriend Spyros Sipetas examined the copyright implications of upcycling under EU law, exploring
whether upcycled objects can infringe on third-party rights by engaging the right of distribution and its exhaustion limits, and also discussing the requirements for an upcycled object to be original and eligible for its own copyright protection.

Patents

Rose Hughes discussed an internal EPO communication that instructs examiners on how to apply the G 1/24 decision, revealing that the EPO sees no need for a major change in practice and will continue to tell examiners to ensure consistency between the claims and the description, and to search for prior art based on both, if they differ.

Rose Hughes discussed the EPO Boards of Appeal's decision in T 0827/23, which upheld the revocation of a patent for therapeutic extracellular vesicles due to a lack of inventive step, noting that the patentee failed to provide comparative data to demonstrate a surprising superior effect over the prior art, highlighting the reproducibility challenges and the importance of having such data for advanced therapies.

Katfriends Rebecca Daramola, Christina Guazzi and Isobel Barry reported on the UPC Court of Appeal's decision in XSYS v Esko, which found that the Unified Patent Court has jurisdiction to rule on alleged infringing acts that occurred before the UPCA came into force and before a patent's opt-out was withdrawn, reflecting the court's broad jurisdictional scope to avoid a fragmented European patent system.

Plant Variety Rights

Jocelyn Bosse reported on the CJEU's decision in Romagnoli Fratelli v Community Plant Variety Office, which upheld the cancellation of a plant variety right for the 'Melrose' potato due to a failure to pay annual fees on time, emphasizing that holders must provide robust evidence of unforeseeable circumstances to justify such a delay and that electronic communications from the CPVO are legally valid.

Trademarks

Marcel Pemsel examined the CJEU’s decision in Purefun (case C-365/24), which clarifies that the EU Trade Mark Directive does not govern national trade name rights and that a national trade name can be used to challenge a later trademark, reaffirming that the priority principle is decisive in such cross-conflicts.

IP Events and Opportunities

Annsley Merelle Ward's Wednesday Whimsies covered several IP stories and events, including WIPO's upcoming SEP Symposium, a US proposal to increase patent fees, a UK High Court decision allowing a copyright class action against the government to proceed, and a copyright complaint by the Kinkade Family Foundation against the Department of Homeland Security for unauthorized use of an artwork.

Image credit: Gemini AI