Leather is one of the most efficient, natural and renewable resource, a unique and highly versatile material which contributes to the quality of everyday life and has done so for centuries. Due to its resilience, comfort and beauty, leather has played an important role since the beginning of times in satisfying man's clothing and decorative needs. Technically speaking, leather is a fundamental output of the leather tanning industry. Tanneries recover the hides and skins that are discarded by-products of the food industry producing meat for human consumption and convert them into leather, a stable material with a wide range of applications in downstream sectors of the consumer goods industry. Footwear, garment, furniture, automotive and leather goods industries are the most important outlets for EU tanners’ production. More specifically, the footwear Directive provides a definition of “leather”, which reserves the use of the word and its synonyms to products resulting from the processing of animal remains that retain the natural structure of the fibres undamaged.

International investment agreements (IIAs) emerged in the 1960's as an instrument to lower political risk for foreign investors and to facilitate political risk insurance when investing in developing countries with weak governance structures. Political risk is constituted by interferences to the investment by host states once the investor has entered the market and which would render the execution of the investment unduly burdensome, deprive the investor of the control or enjoyment of the investment or discriminate or treat the foreign investor arbitrarily. The legal provisions in IIAs include non–discrimination provisions, fair and equitable treatment, full protection and security, rights to compensation in case of expropriations, including indirect regulatory ones with the effect of depriving the investor of the control and benefits of the investment, provisions on free transfer of capital and, occasionally, non–precluded measures clauses as well as stabilization clauses in which the host state promises not to change the regulatory environment affecting the investment.

Cases C-517/14 P and C-519/P, Schutzgemeinschaft Milch und Milcherzeugnisse e.V. v European Commission, Kingdom of the Netherlands, Nederlandse Zuivelorganisatie, unreported 24 October 2014 (Seventh Chamber).

In the two related cases commented on, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) dealt with assessment of locus standi in the case of an applicant who disputed the validity of registration of two indications of geographical origin (IGOs), namely Edam Holland and Gouda Holland, being compound designations and containing a famous generic word designation (name), i.e. Edam and Gouda respectively. The importance of both cases relates, on the one hand, to the fact that registration of these IGOs was challenged on the basis of the generic names Edam and Gouda which are extensively used in practice, occupying a considerable market share. On the other, both cases could be a signal whether the CJEU re–affirms its restrictive approach to assessment of locus standi under Article 263 (4) TFEU. Although the CJEU re–affirmed its longstanding case law on restrictive assessment of locus standi also concerning registration of a compound geographical designation on the basis of a generic name, yet, as is argued in this case note, this approach did not take into account the specifics of registering IGOs (author's summary).

On 7 October 2015 the High Court of Australia unanimously allowed the appeal on D’Arcy v. Myriad Genetics Inc and ordered that claims 1, 2 and 3 of Australian Patent No 686004, entitled “In vivo mutations and polymorphisms in the 17q-linked breast and ovarian cancer susceptibility gene”, be revoked.

The High Court's judgment overturned the decisions of Justice Nicholas of the Federal Court, at first instance, and the Full Federal Court. This case note provides an overview of the High Court's decision and discusses its meaning and implications for patenting isolated nucleic acids in Australia.