The FRAND patent litigation case between Conversant Wireless Licensing SARL and LG Electronics Inc. and LG Electronics France offers a first and exemplary illustration of an extensive use of the procedural arrangements provided by the French Law of July 30, 2018 regarding the protection of trade secrets. The Paris Court of Appeal recently handed down the first decision on the merits implementing the new provisions transposing the European Union Directive. Besides defining the trade secret…

On May 28, 2019, the Cyberspace Administration of China released the draft Measures on the Administration of Data Security (“Data Security Measures“, see our in-house English translation here) for public consultation. These Data Security Measures will be a great leap forward in China’s current data protection landscape, which mainly consists of scattered provisions contained in various pieces of legislations and standards, such as the Cyber Security Law, the E-Commerce Law, the Consumer Rights Protection…

On Monday, April 29th 2019, policy makers and industry representatives from different IoT ‘verticals’ (agriculture, automotive, health, energy, aerospace) gathered in Brussels at the initiative of Vodafone to launch a conversation about the future policies applicable to the Internet of Things (IoT) in Europe. Global Players Require Global Regulation      The debate emphasized how global any approach to IoT regulation should be. All participants agreed that Europe should and must be competitive on the IoT market…

London, Paris, 4 June 2019 – Hogan Lovells recently represented Twitter in the first case brought under the new French ‘fake news’ law. On 17 May a claim brought by Ms. Marie-Pierre Vieu (a European Deputy running for reelection) and Mr. Pierre Ouzoulias  (a French Senator), against Hogan Lovells client Twitter France SAS, was dismissed by the Paris Civil Court. The claim aimed to get the removal of a tweet posted by Mr. Christophe Castaner…

.CLUB Domains, the Registry operating the .CLUB new generic Top Level Domain (gTLD), has recently launched a new service that enables qualified trade mark holders to block .CLUB domain name registrations containing their trade marks. According to the .CLUB Domains’ press release, the Trademark Sentry Unlimited Name Blocking Service (UNBS) “protects a trademark from appearing in any portion of a domain with the popular .CLUB extension – literally covering trillions of permutations of a…

During this year’s 2019 INTA Annual Meeting, our Greater China IP team discussed the following key issues around China’s evolving IP landscape. What’s in store for brand owners in China? Partner, Helen Xia discussed recent updates on strategies to curb trademark hijacking and factors leading up to this phenomenon. In recent years, China has had a high volume of trademark fillings due to the first-to-file principle, the lack of an intent-to-use requirement, and the low…

During the Annual INTA 2019 Meeting, a panel was held on the EU General Data Privacy Regulation (GDPR) and the temporary removal of data for the WHOIS directory. IPMT Partner David Taylor spoke on the following GDPR issues and their impact on global brand protection. When the GDPR came into force back in 2018, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) implemented a temporary policy which resulted in a majority of global registrant…