Editor’s Note, July 2022

Dear Readers,

Welcome to the first IBA Intellectual Property and Entertainment Law newsletter of 2022.

It is always interesting reviewing articles submitted in response to the call for content. It gives the committee a good insight into changes in legislation across the world, new trends or even just specific points of interest exercising our legal brains in a specific jurisdiction.

As a result, we have an eclectic mix in the current newsletter, resetting our focus on trademark, strategy and also looking at new procedures with regards to trademark opposition in Cyprus. We have an article on a new regulation in Portugal which deals with investment obligations applicable to video-on-demand providers (such as Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+, among others) and finally we have a very insightful article on one of our favourite topics, non-fungible tokens (NFTs).

As some of you may be aware, an extremely successful Annual World Life Science conference was held in Paris recently, with this newsletter containing an overview of that conference.

Other potential topic suggestions had a focus on copyright with a lot of discussion on new European Directives and legislative efforts throughout the world in an effort to adequately regulate a digital marketplace.  This has resulted in renewed discussion on broader intellectual property rights and copyright. Therefore, we are ruminating with regards to having a focus on copyright in the next newsletter specifically addressing enhanced protections for the creative industries and how various countries are dealing with bridging the pay gap and looking at collective rights management agreements and equitable remuneration throughout the territories. If this is of interest to you, please let me know and we will then look to send out a call for content later in the year.

Finally, another IBA interest that I have is the organisation of the round table with Elisa Henry, Publications Officer of the IBA Technology Law Committee. I can tell you now that we have a fantastic line up for the 2022 Annual Conference in Miami later this year – some topics will make great articles so I hope we will all get to meet in person at the round table session on the Monday morning.

Best regards,

Eileen O’Gorman

Publications Officer, IBA Intellectual Property and Entertainment Law Committee

eogorman@gmgb.ie