June 2, 2009
According to Rannís, The Icelandic Centre for Research (main Government research funding agency) an estimated 2,7% of the total gross domestic product (GDP) of Iceland is currently being invested in Research and Develpoment. The EU benchmark of 3% of GDP was reached about 4 years ago according to the Centre, but the ratio has declined since then mainly because funding for R&D has not increased as fast as the economic growth in the same period of time. Nevertheless, Iceland is currently among the countries with the highest percentage of GDP invested in R&D. An estimated 2% of the workforce is dedicated to R&D.
more ->
May 27, 2009 The Icelandic Minister of Business Affairs, Gylfi Magnusson has submitted to the parliament an amendment to the Icelandic Trade Mark Act no. 45/1997 which will, if approved, limit the exhaustion of trademark rights to regional exhaustion within the European Economic Area (EEA) replacing international exhaustion.
Until now the legislation has been somewhat unclear, whereas Icelandic Courts have considered the exhaustion of trademark rights to be international in accordance with the EFTA Courts Maglite decision . Following a new EFTA-court decision on July, 8, 2008, in cases no. E-9/07 and E-10/07; L'Oréal Norge AS and L'Oréal SA vs. Per Aarskog AS, Nille AS and Smart Club AS, where the prior interpretation of the exhaustion of trademark rights has been reconsidered and harmonised with ECJ decisions, clearly stating that exhaustion of trademark rights should be regional within the EEA an amendment to the Trade Mark Act is deemed necessary.
May 4, 2009 The Icelandic Patent and Trademark Office has released new statistics for Patent and Trademark applications. The number of European Patent validations in Iceland is also listed.
TrademarksAccording to statistics, available on the PTO´s website, the total number of Trademark applications for the year 2008 was 4652. That is slightly more than the year 2007, when 4636 trademarks applications were filed. This is still less than the record year of 2006 when 4703 applications were filed .
The Board of ISNIC has decided that as of October 29, 2008 the requirement, that a foreign entity wishing to register a .is domain must have an Icelandic administrative contact, will be abolished.
This will in effect allow everyone everywhere to become administrative contacts and register a .is domain without any restrictions.