Latest blog articles

  • I am very pleased that today we will start teaching the EU and Global Cybersecurity Fundamentals course within the Advanced Master in Privacy, Cybersecurity and Data Management LLM we created at ECPC. Today we will kick off the course with Brian Honan, who will lecture on the concept of...

  • Recently, the General Court in the HELL coffee case has confirmed that a descriptive foreign language term (German word HELL) can be granted protection under EU trade mark law (Hell Energy v. EUIPO, T-323/20).

  • When we talk about Trade Marks Trolls we don’t mean the ugly creature that might come to your mind. Instead, we speak about practices that constitute an abuse of trade mark law. So, how to defend yourself against such behaviour?

  • When we think of cybersecurity we are generally concerned with the code, algorithms and systems that are responsible for the functioning of out digital technologies and the safety of our sensitive data. What has become increasingly apparent is the role of humans in ensuring the security of our...

  • Can a single colour alone be a trademark? The question is neither new nor unexplored. However, old wine in a new bottle is presented by the General Court in its decision rejecting an attempt to register a shade of colour for inhalers for asthma and related pharmaceutical preparations, reinstating...

  • Using the trade mark of someone else to describe how your own products relate to the trademark products is allowed under certain circumstances. Recently, the law changed in this respect, leaving the application of some factors uncertain.

  • With AI’s recent breakthrough in machine learning, now more than ever inventors are looking for ways to protect AI systems. But obtaining patent protection depends on the right claims.

  • A new copyright reform (Music Modernization Act) was passed in the US Senate in 2018, comprising reforms on the term of protection for works played through online digital music services such as Spotify, Apple Music and Pandora. However, can copyright keep on being repeatedly extended? Is this...

  • E-personhood is a term proposed in a draft report by the EU Parliament, about civil rules and laws on Robotics. This legal status aims at ensuring rights and responsibilities for the most capable AI agents. An intense debate about its usefulness is taking place in the EU.

  • The advancement of big data may lead to a revolution in the health sector by enabling the personalization of medicine. However, there are still uncertainties regarding the ownership of the data available, and also whether users should be entitled to compensation for the utilisation of their data.