It is not uncommon in cases relating to trademarks and similar rights for history to be discussed, and the Specialized Section in Enterprise Matters of the Milan Court happened to deal with the recent history of Cuba, along with one of its typical products: rum.

A dispute concerning patent infringement recently brought the Milan Court (Business Chamber “A”) to apply the so-called “problem and solution approach” in assessing the inventive step of the invention at issue. In the judgment that defined the dispute (no. 15057/2014 of 17 December 2014), the Court explained this approach borrowed from the “Guidelines for Examination” applied by the European Patent Office in assessing patent applications (the “EPO Guidelines”).

Quite predictably, the first waves of the Google Spain tsunami did not take long to come ashore in our country.

A few days ago, the Italian Antitrust Authority imposed an administrative fine of € 500,000 on the US company TripAdvisor LLC—owner of the famous tourist reviews portal www.tripadvisor.it—and its Italian subsidiary TripAdvisor Italy Srl, for the “dissemination of deceptive information on the sources of the posted reviews, with regard to the unsuitability of the tools and procedures adopted by the trader to contrast false reviews”.

On 12 December the Court of Milan (Business Chamber “A”) issued a judgment in an action for patent infringement characterised in that, in the course of proceedings, the European patent enforced therein had been revoked and then transformed into an Italian utility model, with the particularity that the same European patent already claimed the priority of an Italian utility model, for which there appeared to be a sort of double patenting of the same invention.

A recently published judgment of the Milan Civil Court (No. 14533/2014 of 5 December 2014) ordered an Italian banking institution to compensate two account holders for the damages caused by a phishing scam.

See our merry holidays video here.

On 4 December, the business Court of Milan ruled in the matter of a Community design registration by an unentitled party (judgement n. 14426/2014). In particular, the Court was called to decide a dispute between two companies, the plaintiff Cubica Ltd—later named Too Late Ltd—and the defendant Squan di Pascual Luna Maria Paula & C. LP, which were the holders of two identical Community designs registered respectively in March and in January 2009 for a watch cover.

Some of the most debated issues in Italian patent litigation intersect in a recent order of the Enterprise Matters Section of the Court of Milan (Ord. December 2, 2014, docket no. 20896/2011, Judge Giani), including that of the submission of new evidence to expert witnesses and that of the patent limitation in court proceedings.

On 2 December a long-awaited ruling was published, in which the Lazio Regional Administrative Court (“TAR”) decided – dismissing it – on the action brought by Novartis and Roche against the sanction of a 180 million euro fine imposed upon them by the Italian antitrust authority (“AGCM”) for anti-competitive practices in relation to the respective drugs named “Lucentis” and “Avastin”.

On 5 November, the Court of Milan (Business Court “A”) issued a judgment on a dispute concerning the famous “Polo Player” trademark of the Ralph Lauren group, representing a polo player hitting a ball. In fact, the plaintiff The Polo/Lauren Company (“Ralph Lauren”), proprietor of a series of figurative National and Community trademarks concerning the “Polo Player”, requested the court to declare the invalidity of two trademarks registered in Italy by the defendant R&D of Hong Kong, allegedly including a sign almost undistinguishable from the Polo Player.

By decision of 20 November in joined cases C-581/13 P and C-582/13 P, the Court of Justice of the European Union (“CJEU”) ruled on the cross-class protection of well-known trademarks in relation to Intra-press’ sign “Ballon d’Or”, i.e. the name of the famous football award that is registered as a Community Trademark (“CTM”).

The use of third party trademarks as “ad-words” in order to gain advantageous referencing in Internet searches does not necessarily constitute trademark infringement, the Enterprises Section of the Milan Court ruled on appeal against a summary judgment, in a decision that is filled with references to the EU Court of Justice case-law.

By judgment of 14 November in proceedings with docket no. 76679/08, the Milan Business Court “A” ruled on the amount of damages suffered by the plaintiff due to the commercialisation of products infringing one of its registered designs.

In 2011 a local administration, following an anonymous tip-off, searched the Web and found that one of its employees was offering sexual services on specialised public websites.

On 2 October, the European Medicines Agency (“EMA”) adopted its new policy on the publication of clinical data for medicinal products for human use.

With decision no. 427 of 25 September, the Italian Data Protection Authority specified some important principles on the processing of personal data, clarifying some useful aspects for companies that deal with direct marketing activities.

Even the mere distributor of a patented product is entitled to file a lawsuit for infringement of the relevant patent in a competent court: so it was ruled by the Italian Court of Cassation, thus taking a stance in a very controversial matter, in judgment no. 15350/2014.

The adoption of an Opinion on the Internet of Things and personal data protection in the EU by the Article 29 Working Party (WP) last September had a certain resonance.

The Court of Milan Business Chamber “A” recently issued a decision in a case in which Chanel was sued in relation to its “Latin Lover” advertising campaign of 2010 (decision no. 11375/2014 of 29 September 2014).