By preliminary order of 7 April 2017, the Court of Rome enjoined the Uber Group – after the Court of Milan’s previous order regarding the Uber Pop app – from continuing to provide and advertise vehicle hire with driver services by means of the Uber Black app in Italy, with the fixation of a € 10,000 penalty for each day of delay in complying with the injunction and with the order to publish the latter on the website www.uber.com.

On 25 May 2018, the EU General Data Protection Regulation (no. 679/16, GDPR) will enter into force. It’s a year away, it’s true, but companies will need time to meet the relevant requirements, hence it’s highly recommended that they start preparing now. Getting ready for the scheduled date will be crucial to avoid sanctions reaching 20 million euros or 4% of annual global turnover.

After hard proceedings – which included a reference to the Italian Constitutional Court – the Regional Administrative Court of Lazio (the Court), with a decision published on 30 March 2017, rejected the appeal proposed by several Internet service providers and consumer associations against the online copyright enforcement Regulation adopted by the Italian Communications Authority (the Authority) in December 2013.

With decision no. 1900/17 of 4 April, the IP Court of Turin granted three-dimensional trademark and copyright protection to the famous “Vespa” scooter by Piaggio.

By decision of 22 December 2016, the Italian Data Protection Authority (DPA) upheld a claim brought by a former employee.

In a decision issued on 26 February 2017, the Garante della privacy (the Italian Data Protection Authority) ruled on the application of an Italian resident seeking the removal from Yahoo!’s search engine of links to a US website reporting news of an old judicial mishap that had occurred to him in that country.

By decision no. 2016/17 of 2 March, the Milan IP Court declared the validity and infringement of a patent and a Community unregistered design held by Freddy S.p.A. on its pants named “WR.UP”. Specifically, the pants were characterised by the fact that they “combine the advantages arising from the use of a knit fabric, i.e. jersey, which ensures comfort and fit, with the function to shape the hips and buttocks, thanks to particular technical solutions.”

On 17 January, the Milan IP Court issued an interesting decision (no. 490/17) concerning patent limitations in invalidity proceedings.

With quite a resounding decision of 24 November 2016, the Italian Data Protection Authority (“DPA”) excluded the lawfulness of the processing of personal data proposed by Mevaluate, an organisation wanting to launch a web platform capable of calculating the reputation of certain individuals in an allegedly impartial and reliable way.

On 2 December 2016, the Italian Supreme Court issued a decision (no. 24658/16) as part of a large pharmaceutical litigation between Bayer Pharma AG and Industriale Chimica s.r.l. The Court confirmed the infringement of a Bayer process patent under the doctrine of equivalence, but excluded the patentability of an intermediate covered by that same patent.

On 30 December 2016, the Milan IP Court (Business Court A) issued a preliminary injunction against the marketing of footwear constituting the slavish imitation of shoes with a bow made by Ports 1961 (Ports). Below are the original Ports shoes (to the left) and the imitations (to the right).

As noted by many commentators at the time, following the 6 October 2015 ruling of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in Case C-362/14 Maximillian Schrems v. Data Protection Commissioner, the main tool used within the European Union to (legitimately) transfer personal data to the United States, the so-called Safe Harbor regime, had practically ceased to exist.

On 10 November, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled on the possibility of registering the shape of the famous Rubik’s Cube as a trademark (C-30/15 P).

With Judgment No. 4710/2016 of 20 September 2016, the IP Court of Catania, Italy, granted protection to the well-known KAMUT® trademark against unauthorised use by local entrepreneurs.

By its Decision no. 303 of 13 July 2016, the Italian Data Protection Authority (“Garante della privacy”) provided some cues on the interpretation of the current rules on the monitoring of the use of IT services by employees in the workplace, amended in late 2015.

The Milan Court, with ruling no. 10374 of 28 September 2016, overturned an earlier decision with which the Italian Data Protection Authority (DPA) denied protection to the appellant, who had a public position and enforced her right to be forgotten. The right to be forgotten has been discussed here and here on this blog.

On 15 September 2016, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) issued a decision on a reference for a preliminary ruling by the Munich Regional Court I (case C-484/14) concerning the interpretation of Article 12(1) of the e-commerce Directive 2000/31/CE.

By order no. 226 of 18 May 2016, the Italian Data Protection Authority (DPA) issued a decision on the processing of personal data carried out through the localisation of company smartphones given to employees.

By the decision of 8 September 2016 (case C-160/15), the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled on a reference for a preliminary ruling by the Dutch Supreme Court, with which the latter requested it to assess whether posting hyperlinks giving access to protected works published online without the authorisation of the copyright holder infringed the latter’s right to communicate the work to the public under Article 3(1) of Directive 2001/29/EC, the interpretation of which we already discussed here on this blog, although with regard to different problems.

The Milan IP Court, with ruling no. 8986/2016 published on 18 July 2016, stated that the commercialisation of some watches made by the Italian competitor Blu Trade S.r.l. and its distributor, Coin S.r.l., infringed the Community design no. 919204-002, registered in 2008 by the Danish company Noon Copenhagen AS, and that such activity also constituted unfair competition for slavish imitation.