On 19 February 2026, I had the honour and privilege of being invited by the European Commission to discuss the UP and the UPC with some of Europe’s leading patent practitioners. This article sets out the reflections I shared on that occasion: where the system is already delivering, where the friction points are emerging in practice, and which technical adjustments would most effectively improve usability, predictability and legitimacy.

By four judgments delivered on the same day – Cases T-1170/23, T-1171/23, T-1172/23 and T-1173/23 – the General Court of the European Union definitively confirmed the invalidity of four EU three-dimensional trademarks, all owned by Spin Master Toys UK Ltd and all relating to variants of the well-known cube-shaped puzzle.

‍These decisions are substantially overlapping, both in their reasoning and in the solutions adopted, and may be read as a single coherent intervention on the issue of functional shape within EU trademark law, a topic we have previously addressed, for example, here.

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Commercial collaborations frequently give rise to new technical or creative outcomes. When this happens, disputes often emerge as to who owns the intellectual property rights in those results.
In litigation, the answer almost invariably depends on the content of the parties’ agreements — and, just as importantly, on what those agreements fail to regulate.

A recent judgment of the Milan IP Court of Appeal (Judgment no. 68/2026 of 14 January 2026), provides a clear illustration of this principle.

In its judgment of 12 November 2025 (Case T-252/24), the General Court of the European Union addressed the issue of descriptive trademarks, focusing on the delicate balance between evocative verbal elements and figurative components in composite signs.

The case concerned the European Union trademark WASHTOWER, registered in Class 20 of the Nice Classification for “furniture, namely furniture for washing machines or tumble dryers”, which was the subject of an application for a declaration of invalidity filed by LG Electronics Inc. (LG) on the basis of the absolute grounds for refusal set out in Article 7(1)(b) and (c) of Regulation (EU) 2017/1001 (EUTMR).

The Court reiterates principles previously articulated in Cofemel and Brompton and seeks to clarify (i) how the originality of a design object is to be assessed for copyright purposes and (ii) how infringement is to be established.

The court invites the claimant to select those attacks it considers the strongest and to rank them in order of importance. Once the attacks so selected are found to be unfounded, the Court considers it justified not to examin the remaining attacks. This places substantial responsibility on the parties as regards the selection and prioritisation of their objections.

By order dated 3 March 2025, the Specialist Business Section of the Milan Court granted the application for interim injunctive relief under Article 131 of the Italian Industrial Property Code and Article 700 of the Code of Civil Procedure filed by Chanel and its Italian distributor, prohibiting the sale of the maison’s perfumes inside the stores of the defendants, two well-known retail chains specializing in general consumer products for personal and household care.

By judgment of 10 September 2025 (Case T-425/24), the General Court of the European Union ruled on a conflict between the trademarks belonging to unrelated sectors: pasta and fashion.

As specialists are well aware, limitation by acquiescence is a legal doctrine where a trademark owner loses their right to challenge a later, conflicting, trademark if they knowingly tolerate its use for a continuous five-year period. To invoke this defense, the owner of the later mark must prove the earlier owner was aware of the use and did not take legal action. This limitation is ruled out only if the application for the later mark was made in bad faith.

The IP Court of Turin addressed this matter in its recent judgment no. 4050/2025. The dispute involved two companies both operating in the paint and related products sector: one, the plaintiff, was the owner of the Italian word mark DULOX, registered as early as 1938; the other, the defendant, owned and had been using the later European Union trademark DULUX, registered in the ‘90s.

With its ruling no. 6240/2025, the IP Court of Milan held the chairman of the board, of a company engaged in the use of unlicensed software, jointly responsible with the company for copyright infringement. This decision validates an already established trend in Italian IP courts.

In an interesting ruling on sound marks the EU General Court annulled the decision of the Fifth Board of Appeal of the EUIPO, which had rejected the application for registration of EU sound mark no. 018849003 filed by the Berlin public transport company, Berliner Verkehrsbetriebe.

With its order of 27 June 2025, the Court of Genoa ruled on an unusual dispute concerning sports audiovisual rights and video game content, rejecting the motion for interim injunction filed by Lega Nazionale Professionisti Serie A against a gamer accused of violating its exclusive rights by illegally publishing online “highlights” created using the EA Sports FC25 video game to recreate the actions of football matches.

The Supreme Court returned to the issue of compensation for damages in relation to patent infringement and, in particular, the distinction between the sale and marketing of the infringing product for the purposes of  compensation for damages.

The Court upheld the objection based on Articles 102 and 103(2) of Regulation 1308/13, prohibiting, amongst others, the commercial use of the protected name “in so far as such use exploits the reputation” of the PDO; and any “false or misleading indication” as to the origin, nature or essential qualities of the product.

With order no. 12956 of 14 May 2025, the Italian Supreme Court ruled in a complex case concerning copyright and the digital exploitation of musical works, rejecting the appeal filed by Sony Music Entertainment Italy S.r.l. against Lucio Battisti's heirs and their companies Edizioni Musicali Acqua Azzurra S.r.l. and Aquilone S.r.l.

A 24 June 2025 PI order issued by the IP division of the Court of Venice confirms a well-established line of Italian case law regarding the ownership regime applicable to commissioned software (which we addressed already here).

The court highlighted that a rehearing is an extraordinary legal remedy that, under Article 81(1) UPCA, may exceptionally be granted only if a final decision is tainted by a criminal act or a fundamental procedural defect. it is not available for mere errors or disagreements over the interpretation of the law or the assessment of the parties’ arguments or evidence.

By judgment No. 1599/2025 of 5 May 2025, the Venice IP Court of Appeal affirmed that it is possible to obtain a declaratory judgment of infringement and the related injunctive and compensatory relief even with respect to a patent whose main claim has been declared invalid.

On February 18, 2025, Judgment No. 4131 issued by the First Civil Division of the Court of Cassation was published. The Court returned to the topic of co-owned patents, and particularly the applicability of the rules on co-ownership in such cases. The decision in question raised a legal issue of such significance as to justify a public hearing: in the case of patent co-ownership, may the invention be freely exploited by each co-owner, or, conversely, is the consent of the other always required?

According to the CdS, the combination of the elements – position of the billboard near the Football Village, slogan used, football shirt, flags of the nations participating in the event – constituted communicative “framing” capable of persuading the average customer to believe, erroneously, that Zalando was the official sponsor of UEFA Euro 2020.