Commissioner McCreevy said: “This is good news for businesses in Europe. This will promote entrepreneurship and stimulate economic activity, which is essential in times of economic crisis. In particular, small and medium-sized enterprises, for which the costs and procedure of obtaining this protection are often a heavy burden, will profit from these improvements.”

The move is the second cut in fees in five years, and has been made possible by increased efficiency at OHIM. The process of obtaining a trade mark has been simplified and there has been a strong drive towards doing business online. Over the past five years, the average time taken to register a Community trade mark has dropped by 50% to around eight months.

   
The judicial battle between Walt Disney Company Italia S.p.A., owner of the trademark “W.I.T.C.H.”, and Rainbow S.p.A., owner of thre “WINX CLUB” trademark, concluded with the sentence issued by the Civil Court of 

Bologna on August 2 2004, inspired me a semninar at the University of Macerata (among the Intellectual Property Law and Commercial Law course), about the Italian case-law on the matter of trademarks confusion.

The Letter of Intent instrument is pretty common for the drawing up of international agreements, above all in the field of IP Law (i.e. transfer, licensing, distribution of patented products), where the parties reached an understanding on the whole (i.e. term, territory, price, products, etc.), but there still are a lot of other conditions to be defined. A Letter of Intent must be followed by a definitive agreement, in order to give efficacy to the entire agreement.

Notwithstanding, in the light of recent judicial sentences, both Italian and foreigner, the simple titling of the document as “Letter of Intent” is not sufficient to totally exclude a binding agreement, in the case the signed document fully expresses the precise willing of the parties, such as a provision immediately effective.

For this reason, and to avoid that the Letter of Intent becomes a binding agreement, it should be expressly specified that the document “is not binding between the parties” and it should be provided a specific clause about the effects the parties want to give to the document.

A Letter of Intent about the distribution of patented products should include the following minimum elements:

• Statement of not-binding understanding;
• Description of the products and approximate price (these are better arranged in a exhibit);
• Term of the definitive agreement;
• Territory;
• Exclusivity or not;
• Warranties of clear and marketable title;
• Date for definitive agreement signature;
• Non-competition clause;
• Confidentiality;
• Break-up fee.

In case of signature of the definitive agreement as established in the Letter of Intent, the willing of the parties will be transfused in the definitive agreement and consequently the Letter of Intent will lose its effectiveness. Otherwise, in the case the definitive agreement is not signed, according to Italian Civil Law there could be a case of pre-contractual liability (art. 1337 Civil Code), and/or contractual liability in relation to the binding obligations arising from the Letter of Intent. For this reason it is always advisable to establish the applicable Law and Jurisdiction.

Download here a draft of Letter of Intent that I’ve arranged.

Finally, through Parliament Act n. 133 dated August 6^th 2009, a new subparagraph has been added to article 34 of the Personal Data Protection Code (D. Lgs. 196/2003) according to which an entity that only processes non-sensitive personal data or processes sensitive data that only consist in the health or disease status related to their employees and collaborators (whereby no reference is made to the respective diagnosis), or in their employees’ and collaborators’ membership of trade union organizations, can replace the security policy document (DPS) with a self-executing affidavit signed by the data controller, in pursuance of section 47 of Presidential Decree n. 445 dated December 28^th 2000, certifying that the data controller only processes the above mentioned data in compliance with the other security measures provided by the Code.

This amendment will bring a significant relief to most companies, who – as observed by the Italian Privacy Authority too – considered the security policy document as a redundant bureaucratic requirement.

As regards the said processing operations, the Privacy Authority shall determine simplified arrangements to implement the minimum security measures by small companies, professionals and handicrafts.

Download the current Data Protection Code

Download an example of self executing affidavit (Italian)

However the Commission did not ban all compatible inkjet cartridges for Epson printers, and there are some Companies who still manufacture and distribute compatible cartridges that comply with USITC guidelines.

The new USITC guidelines are:

1. refilled cartridges that were EPSON branded cartridges must have first been sold by Epson to consumers in the U.S. There is a “first sale” exception to patent law that allows the refilling and resale of patented devices that were first sold in the U.S. provided no other patents are infringed;

2. The refilling process must be limited to legally permissible repair to restore the cartridge to usable condition, but not complete reconstruction by replacing major components like the ink tank and IC chip;

3. refilled cartridges must be prominently described at point of sale and on packaging as “refilled” or “remanufactured”;

4. Epson trademarks on refilled cartridges must be removed or covered so consumers are not misled into believing that the cartridges were refilled or approved by Epson.

5. You cannot use any misleading or unsubstantiated competitive claims to sell refilled cartridges. Depending on the available substantiation, examples of potentially misleading claims include statements like “Refilled in USA,” “Same ink as OEM cartridges,” or “Meets or exceeds OEM specifications.

Could it be a possibile guide-line also for the European Market?