Buy now, pay later giant Zip Co has successfully defended a lawsuit over its use of Firstmac’s ‘Zip’ trade mark and won its bid to have the mortgage provider’s mark removed for non-use.
Payment giant Visa has lost an application for a patent covering a way to transfer assets between banks, with an IP Australia delegate saying the invention uses generic computer technology and is not patentable.
Marlow Foods, maker of popular meat-replacement product Quorn, has lost an application to patent a vegan burger that contains a non-egg binding agent, with IP Australia saying the recipe lacked inventiveness.
CSIRO has won its bid to access samples of a wheat grain product with increased fibre, as it contemplates a possible patent infringement lawsuit against a South Australian food company.
New Zealand honey producers have failed in a lengthy fight with their Aussie counterparts to trade mark the term ‘manuka honey’, with the Intellectual Property Office of New Zealand ruling the phrase is merely descriptive of a type of honey.
An appeals court has said that while it might be desirable for law firms to disclose their involvement in drafting expert reports, they are not legally obligated to do so, overturning a finding that Corrs Chambers Westgarth went “far beyond the permissible scope” of involvement in a report prepared for a trade secrets case.
A judge has ordered a litigation funder that bankrolled a photographer’s unsuccessful copyright claim against CoreLogic to pay indemnity costs to the property data analytics company, saying the funder was not “motivated by any concerns for access to justice”.
IP Australia has rejected an application by US technology company Block to patent a mobile payment method, saying it does not describe a manner of manufacture — the threshold requirement tripping up many claimed computer-implemented inventions.
Automotive electronics company Directed Electronics is set to claw back $3.27 million in commission payments made to a former manager through a secret side agreement with South Korean giant Hanhwa, with a ruling on damages still to come in the five-year case.
US singer Katy Perry and an Australian fashion designer are at loggerheads over court orders to be made following a judge’s finding the pop star was liable for trade mark infringement, with concerns raised that Perry’s ‘Teenage Dream’ shorts could “fall between the cracks”.