Litigation roundup: cases you may have missed last week
Today WIPR rounds up some of the most interesting IP cases that we reported on in the week beginning September 25, with a dispute over gluten-free recipes taking centre stage.
Jamie Oliver served with trademark suit
Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver was sued by a non-profit, Gluten Intolerance Group (GIG) of North America, over the use of a gluten-free trademark.
This is the second time this year that the group has sued Oliver, accusing the chef of including a mark with letters ‘GF’ in some of his recipes.
GIG claimed that the use of the mark attempts to mislead the public into believing that the chef’s food-related programmes and recipes have been certified as gluten-free.
Brokers go head-to-head
Insurance rivals Aon and Willis Towers Watson hit the headlines when they began to brawl over trade secrets.
Aon claimed that a former consultant had misappropriated Aon’s trade secrets and confidential information.
Michael Burwell, the former PwC partner accused of misappropriation, is set to begin his new job at Willis this week.
On the same day, Willis filed a lawsuit against Aon, arguing that Burwell has not divulged any trade secrets and that Aon’s counsel had sent a letter which “brazenly threatened” that it would be unethical for Burwell to take on his job role at Willis.
Piracy on the high seas of Europe
Dutch internet service providers Ziggo and XS4ALL Internet were ordered to block file-sharing website The Pirate Bay by the Court of The Hague.
The sites must temporarily block access to the website until a final decision has been made in a case pending before the Dutch Supreme Court.
The Pirate Bay had been unblocked while anti-piracy group BREIN took its case to the Dutch Supreme Court, which referred questions to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in November 2015.
In June this year, the CJEU held that file-sharing websites have committed an act of communication to the public within the meaning of article 3(1) of Directive 2001/29/EC by making available and managing an online sharing platform.
The Federal Circuit drills down
The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit overturned a Patent Trial and Appeal Board ruling on a patent covering a drilling tool for oil and gas operations.
According to the court’s precedential ruling, the board had used an “unreasonably broad” claim construction.
The court cited Microsoft v Proxyconn in finding that even when giving terms their broadest reasonable interpretation, the board cannot construe the claims “so broadly that its constructions are unreasonable under general claim construction principles”.
And one to look out for…
Later today, the US Supreme Court starts its new term and may announce plans to take on a case that revisits the Alice v CLS Bank decision.
Electronic design automation company Synopsys has petitioned the court to “examine whether an otherwise revolutionary technological breakthrough is not an ‘inventive concept’” under the second step of Alice “merely because the court believed the breakthrough could theoretically be implemented without a computer”.
For background on the case, please click here.
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