In a landmark decision, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) in the UK recently ruled that, for the purposes of the CAP Code at least, a social media user may be considered a celebrity where they have 30,000 followers or more. In this case, the ASA found that an influencer breached the CAP Code when she published an Instagram post promoting an over-the-counter sleeping tablet produced by Sanofi. The caption for the post was marked ‘AD’…

  While prosecuting a patent application before the USPTO, you receive a novelty or obviousness rejection in which the cited prior art seems very familiar… because it is your own reference. Is this proper? Can a US patent examiner use your own disclosures against you? Like many legal questions, the answer is “it depends.” When making a prior art rejection in the US, a patent examiner distinguishes between prior art that is available under 35…

Since the decision in Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank International, 573 U.S. 208 (2014), one of the most hotly discussed topics in the US patent field has been patent eligibility under 35 U.S.C. § 101 (“§ 101”).  Certainly, countless hours have been spent debating, discussing, and arguing proper application and interpretation of § 101.  This is the result of significant uncertainty felt throughout the field with respect to application of § 101 at the USPTO…

Squire Patton Boggs is thrilled that our outstanding IP team continues to be recognised for its expertise. Partner Ron Lemieux has recently been listed in the IAM Patent 1000 as one of the world’s leading patent professionals. Ron is based in our Palo Alto office and we are so pleased that his work and dedication to the practice has been recognised. Congratulations Ron!…

With childhood obesity rates in the UK among some of the worst in Europe, the Government has set a national target to halve childhood obesity by 2030. Whilst the Government acknowledges that this is a multi-faceted problem, it has reported that evidence suggests that children’s exposure to advertising of products that are high in fat, salt and/or sugar (“HFSS”) contributes to their consumption patterns. HFSS product advertising is currently subject to content and placement restrictions…

On June 24, 2019, the US Supreme Court invalidated the Lanham Act’s ban on registering “immoral or scandalous” trademarks. In Iancu v. Brunetti, the Court held that that the ban, in Section 2(a) of the Lanham Act, violated the First Amendment because it required the Government to discriminate against certain viewpoints: marks considered to have “immoral or scandalous” content.  This decision was not unexpected, as it was presaged by the Court’s 2017 decision in…

On 13 June 2019, the Court of Justice of the European Union (“CJEU“) published its ruling on the classification of Gmail in the EU following a request for a preliminary ruling from the German Courts. Gmail is a web-based email service, and is a type of “Over-The-Top” (“OTT”) service. The CJEU determined that Gmail is not an electronic communications service (“ECS”), as defined in the Framework Directive (Directive 2002/21/EC, as amended) – i.e. a service…