With the decision of last July 16 (C-311/18), the EU Court of Justice invalidated decision no. 2016/1250 with which, according to art. 45 GDPR, the EU Commission had stated that the Privacy Shield – i.e. the EU-USA agreement ruling on data transfers between the European Union and the USA – provided for adequate protection for the data concerned.

With Sentence no. 8944 of 14 May 2020, the Italian Supreme Court stated that the owner of a registered design, when acting against infringing products, may claim both registered design infringement under the Code of intellectual Property (IP Code) and unfair competition for slavish imitation under Article 2598(1) of the Civil Code (CC).

With a decision dated April 28, the EUIPO’s Second Board of Appeal rejected Amazon Technologies Inc.’s application for the registration of the motion logo represented below, due to its lack of distinctive character under Article 7(1)(b) of Regulation no. 1001/2017 on EU trademarks.

An order issued on April 24, in the dispute between Facebook Ireland Ltd. and the Italian far-right movement CasaPound, saw CasaPound score its second victory.

The Veneto Region has published a call for support for the purchase of innovation services by SMEs. This intervention is aimed at supporting the innovation projects of micro, small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs), which operate in Veneto, with a financial envelope of EUR 3.000.000.

With Sentence No. 11959/2020 of 10 April 2020 the Italian Supreme Court found that computer data should be considered, for criminal purposes, a movable good capable of embezzlement pursuant to Article 646 of the Criminal Code.

On 11 June 2020, the European Court of Justice (“ECJ”) published a historic ruling on copyright protection in case C-833/18 (Brompton Bicycle Ltd v. Chedech / Get2Get), finding that a shape dictated by the technical function of the relevant product can be protected by copyright, if it is also original; that is, if its author still had a margin of free and creative choice that allowed him to reflect his personality in the work.

For the purpose of containing the spread of the Covid-19 virus, Article 6 of Legislative Decree no. 28/2020 provided for the implementation of a national platform for contact tracing, aimed at alerting users who came in contact with virus-positive subjects, who can therefore promptly activate health prevention and treatment protocols (quarantine, medical exams).

Regulation (EU) No. 775/2018, laying down rules for the application of Article 26(3) of Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011 on the provision of food information to consumers, came into force on 1 April 2020.

With sentence no. 8433/2020, the Italian Supreme Court granted copyright protection to the layouts of the stores of the well-known cosmetic chain Kiko, confirming the conclusions previously reached by the Milan IP Court and by the Milan Court of Appeal and taking the opportunity to summarise the relevant case-law. We already spoke about the Milan first instance decision here on this blog.

The Law Decree no. 16/2020 on «urgent measures for the organisation and conduct of the Milano Cortina 2026 Olympic and Paralympic winter games and the Turin 2021-2025 ATP Finals, as well as the prohibition of parasitic advertising» was published in the Official Journal no. 66 on 13 march 2020. With this Decree, containing several organisational provisions relating to the above-mentioned sporting events, the Legislator has also established a general and organic discipline of the ambush marketing phenomenon (that we have discussed here in our blog).

With Order no. 2150/2020 of 27 march 2020, The Council of State ruled on the relationship between the right of access to administrative documents and the protection of trade secrets regarding a public tender procedure.

With a recent decision issued in the proceedings C-567/18, the EU Court of Justice, ruling on the interpretation of Article 9 of EU Regulation 2009/209 and Article 9 of EU Regulation 2017/1001 on EU trademarks, held that a subject who, on behalf of a third-party, stores products infringing another’s trademark does not in turn infringe that trademark, unless such products are stored for the purposes of being commercialised by the same warehouse-owner, or the latter is aware of the trademark infringement.

In the Official Journal no. 65 of 12 March 2020, the Decree 15 January 2020 of the Italian Ministry of Economic Development (MISE) was published, issued pursuant to the Law Decree no 34/2019.

With an order dated December 3, 2019 in the proceedings brought by Satispay S.p.a. and Satispay Ltd. against Sisal Group S.p.a., the Court of Milan ascertained that Sisal committed acts of parasitic unfair competition to the detriment of Satispay, ruling on the case with a temporary limited injunction.

By order no. 4721/2020, the Italian Supreme Court recently ruled in favour of the well-known publishing house Arnoldo Mondadori Editore S.p.a., owner of the trademark «Grazia», ascertaining that its trademark was counterfeited by the sign «grazia.net». The three instances of the case are briefly summarised below.

At the end of December 2019, the European Patent Office (EPO) refused two patent applications (No. 18275163 and No. 18275174) filed by Dr Stephen Thaler, in which an artificial intelligence developed by Dr Thaler, named DABUS, was designated as inventor.

The Coronavirus emergency impacts  existing contracts in various ways, in particular for two reasons