What's inside our April issue

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What's inside our April issue

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Copyright rankings, design developments, managing brand protection, a rare patent case in Hong Kong, our latest UPC scenario, and why you have been doing patent drawings wrong - just some of the articles in the April issue of Managing IP

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The April issue of the magazine was published on April 1, and is available to read online: sign in with your subscription details or take out a free trial for seven days. In this issue:

  • I report on the recent INTA/AIPPI Designs Conference in Singapore in our cover story "Why we love (and hate) design rights". We offer five reasons why design rights are great, and (in the interests of balance) five reasons why they might not be. The article includes links to our coverage of the recent Trunki designs case at the UK Supreme Court and the Apple v Samsung dispute heading to the US Supreme Court.

  • Katrina Burchell and Célia Ullmann look at the struggles companies face in organising their brand protection internal structure, budgets and reporting lines - and offer some practical advice in "How to manage brand protection internally"

  • The third article in our series looking at hypothetical scenarios in the UPC considers a standards case from the defendant's perspective. Michael Carter, Nick Cunningham and David Barron assess how the legal, procedural and competition issues will be handled in the new system.

  • Wenhui Zhang and Stephen Zou review recent decisions on supporting patent claims in China. This article is particularly relevant for those involved in the biotech and pharma industries.

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  • Till Lampel and Martina Pfaff look at a string of interesting trade mark cases from Germany involving colours, sweets and animals (pictured left).

  • Patent cases at Hong Kong's Court of Appeal are rare, but a recent judgment addressed sufficiency, novelty and inventive step among other issues. Nina Fitzgerald and Jeffrey McLean discuss it.

  • In a thought-provoking article on "The advantages of numeral word labelling", Amit Kumar Singh of TATA Steel asks if there is a better, clearer way to label the figures in patent documents.

The April issue also includes our roundups of IP news and moves, highlights from the Managing IP blog, website and social media, a special Utynam's Heirs from the International Patent Forum and our monthly collection of sponsored and free-to-read international briefings, covering the latest developments from Africa to Vietnam. 

It also features the third and final part of the IP STARS 2016 firm rankings, with the top copyright firms listed. See our recent blog post for more details.

Coming up in our bumper May issue, distributed from May 1:

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    All the news and photos from the Managing IP Global and North America Awards dinners (pictured right)

  • Disparaging marks in the US - analysis

  • Why the case law on design rights in the EU is looking up

  • Trade mark infringement and OEM in China - the latest cases discussed

  • Sports sponsorship: what to do when an endorser goes rogue

  • The top 250 women in IP listed

Plus much, much more!

Some of these articles will be available online before the hard copy is published, so to ensure you have immediate access, subscribe now and get the Managing IP emails.

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Law firms are developing AI tools to improve productivity and efficiency – and that is having an impact on patent and trademark work
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Munich-based Epic Legal, founded by Nicolás Schmitz and Philipp Strommer, hopes to attract market talent by abandoning old-hat systems
OpenAI’s claims that China’s DeepSeek violated its proprietary technology should prompt the US company to rethink its past actions
OpenAI’s accusation against Chinese AI tool DeepSeek and a significant licensing deal for Nokia were among the top talking points this week
Counsel weigh in on how firms should be thinking about surveys in wake of closely followed trademark ruling
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