Intellectual Property Group December Newsletter

Another very active year in the Inetllectual Property (IP) world is drawing to a close and the range of ongoing initiatives and concerns being raised at a local and European level is unprecedented.

On the one hand we see proposals to limit the scope of protection, in terms of the plain packaging proposals in Ireland and the recommendations of the Irish Copyright Review Committee. On the other there are initiatives such as the European proposals for the Protection of Non-Agricultural Indications of Origin, for a Directive on Trade Secrets and the new European Patent and proposed European Patent Court system that will certainly expand, but will also severely complicate the system for IP protection. Meanwhile the ongoing rollout of the new generic top level domain names raises ever new challenges for on-line trade mark protection.