The simple answer is NO.  A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from manufacturing, using or selling the invention. Patent protection is limited to a specific jurisdiction and no single patent provides protection at an “international” or “worldwide” level. Those pursuing patent rights will...Read More

A Design Amendment (Advisory Council on Intellectual Property Response) Bill 2020 was passed by the Australian Parliament on 30 August 2021. The most notable change by this Bill is the introduction of a 12-month grace period for filing a design application in Australia. This means you can make your design public up to 12 months...Read More

Whilst Patent Offices and courts in various jurisdictions such as US, Europe and UK have rejected the idea of an Artificial Intelligience (AI) system named DABUS to be an inventor, an Australian Federal Court has in Thaler v Commissioner of Patents [2021] FCA 879 held that artificial intelligience (AI) systems can be inventors for the...Read More

If you have been spending a lot of time at home during the lockdown, I hope that you have been exercising and spending time in the sunlight. For many of us, our stay-at-home free time is now filled with binging streamed content and video games, whilst others are reacquainting themselves with book reading, an indoor...Read More

I admire inventors who have studied a problem, and then by their creativeness and perseverance, find a solution. Along the way to finding that solution, their invention in many instances is the product of trial and error. However, in my view the most interesting inventions are those that were created by accident. One of my...Read More

Australia like the United States has a “12 month” grace period for filing patent applications. This means that an owner/inventor has up to 1 year from their date of public disclosure to file patent applications in these countries. Whilst the US has such a grace period applying to design protection, Australia at present does not....Read More

IP Australia (AU Trade Marks Office) has recently reported that after filing trade marks in an export market, Australian businesses are three times more likely to enter that market. Also, long term exporters will earn around 30% more export revenue. After filing trade marks in export markets, businesses also become more resilient to exchange rate...Read More

Whilst it is possible for a business to adopt a trade mark for its goods and services without registering the mark, it is preferable to obtain registration of the trade mark. To ensure that a trade mark is registrable in Australia from the outset, you should not adopt a word mark that is descriptive of...Read More

In Australia, patent attorneys are not lawyers, and a professional using the title “lawyer” has completed a law degree, and if they intend to give legal advice, they must also have a current practicing certificate. A lawyer who is “admitted to the Bar”, referred to as a “barrister” is capable of representing clients in most...Read More

In recent years, there has in Australia been considerable flux as to what is patentable for computer-implemented inventions. In the Commissioner of Patents v RPL Central Pty Ltd [2015] FCAFC 177, a Full Bench of the Federal Court found that a computer-implemented method (which the court characterised as a ‘business method’ or ‘scheme’) to be...Read More