We are proud to announce that we have received another silver recognition this year from World Trademark Review 1000 (WTR 1000) for our trademarks and designs services. Trademark and design attorneys Noëlle Wolfs en Raquel Alvarez are mentioned as 'recommended individuals'.
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Help restore damaged reefs with 3D printed artificial reefs. That's Coastruction's mission. Not for nothing did this ambitious startup receive the prestigious V.O. Patents & Trademarks Innovation Award during the NL Startup Competition. We spoke with Josine Beets, Project & Business Development Manager at Coastruction.
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As AI and machine learning advance, protecting innovations based on these technologies is essential to securing IP and capitalizing on efforts. For an AI invention to be patentable, it must have a "technical character," meaning it must use technical means to solve a technical problem. A software module that applies a machine learning model is not inherently patentable unless it contributes to solving a technical problem in a novel and non-obvious way.
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The importance of terms and conditions is often underestimated - writing the two words in full is sometimes even too much. “Who reads them at all?”, ‘We don't even know what's in them ourselves’, ‘We rarely fall back on them’ and ‘Why would we want to put general terms and conditions forward if the cooperation with this customer or supplier is going well?’ are arguments heard with some regularity.
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One of the most important requirements for obtaining a patent on a product in Europe is that the product is novel. That means that before the day on which the patent application was filed, the product was not yet available to the public in any way.
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Friday 17 January, our colleague Jorien Wartena passed the last part of her Benelux Trademark and Design Attorney exam. She may now call herself trademark and design attorney.
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As of 1 June 2023, the European Patent Office (EPO) offers the possibility to register a granted European patent as a unitary patent. This unitary patent has effect in 18 European Union (EU) member states, representing 80% of the GDP of the EU. Before its start, it was uncertain if patentees would readily embrace the unitary patent system, afraid of losing their patent in a single court action.
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As of 1 January 2025, Bernard Ledeboer has taken over the baton of V.O. from Herman Witmans. An excellent moment to pause for a moment and subject the outgoing and new chairman to a short interview.
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Since 1 December, our office on the High Tech Campus Eindhoven (HTCE) has moved to a brand new location elsewhere on the HTCE: Lucis One (HTC 91), part of the sustainable expansion of the Campus. V.O. has been present for 18 years within this, as HTCE itself describes it, “smartest square kilometer in Europe.”
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Our firm regularly attends international meetings of IP professional and stakeholder organizations. In October, for example, the annual world congress of AIPPI (Association Internationale pour la Protection de la Propriété Intellectuelle) took place in Hangzhou, China.
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