Wednesday whimsies

We're all getting twitchily excited in European trade mark circles (remember: a circle is something you go round and round in, notes Merpel) about Case C‑324/09 L’Oréal SA and others v eBay International AG and others.  The IPKat will of course be giving full coverage of the ruling of the Court of Justice of the European Union this coming Tuesday, 12 July.  Two days later, on Thursday 14 July, there's a seminar on this decision which you may fancy attending.  It's "Trademark use in the online market place: L'Oreal v. eBay". It's organised by the Trademark Law Institute and the venue is theVrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Gebouw Initium, De Boelelaan 1077 (that's somewhere in the Netherlands, Merpel murmurs knowingly). The language of the seminar is English and admission is free.  The mouthwatering cast of trade mark stars and IP gurus includes Charles Gielen and Professor Visser [Is that Dirk or Derk? We should be told!].  Further details can be obtained from the admirable and scholarly Alexander Tsoutsanis, whom you can email here.

Only two short days ago the IPKat asked if anyone knew anything about the European Union's latest piece of legislation on falsified medicines, in view of the fact that the Falsified Medicines Directive appeared to be relevant to IP, judging by the recitals in the preamble. The Kats now send their thanks to Tanvi Shah (associate, Fasken Martineau LLP) for pointing them to this hot-off-the-press piece from her firm's Life Sciences Bulletin. Among other things it says:

"The Council of the European Union has formally adopted the Falsified Medicines Directive ... which had been approved by the European Parliament in February 2011. The Directive brings in numerous new initiatives to help safeguard the medicines supply chain and protect patients in order to prevent the circulation of falsified medicines. While its aims are generally welcomed, the Directive will impact businesses at all levels of the supply chain and its measures are expected to be expensive to implement. 

Scope of the Directive 

A falsified medicinal product is defined by the Directive as:

“any medicinal product with a false representation of: (a) its identity, including its packaging and labelling, its name or its composition as regards any of the ingredients including excipients and the strength of those ingredients; (b) its source, including its manufacture, its country of manufacturing, its country of origin or its marketing authorisation holder; or (c) its history, including the records and documents relating to the distribution channels used” [this would appear to cover products bearing infringing trade marks, but ...].

The Directive does not deal with unintentional quality defects or the protection of intellectual and industrial property such as registered trade marks or patent rights. The focus and purpose of the Directive is to protect against the major health threat that can arise from falsified medicines.
The measures introduced by the Directive will apply generally to all prescription products unless they are specifically exempted, but not to non-prescription medicines unless they are considered to be at high risk of falsification. ..."

Around the weblogs. Are you an author -- or a prospective author -- of an article or current intelligence note for the Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice? If so, this message is for you.  The fourth guested piece by Keith Mallinson (WiseHarbor) for IP Finance, here, deals with "Fixing IP Prices with Royalty Rate Caps and Patent Pools".   The PatLit patent litigation weblog cautions readers about the dangers of compromising the role of expert witnesses by teaching them to be partisan (even though they are ...).  Art & Artifice explains how the US Supreme Court reaches the conclusion that computer games are works of art.  There's also a crackingly good debut post by Naomi Jane Gray (1709 Blog) here on 'red-flag' knowledge and wilful blindness under the US's Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

... but is this mouse patented?

A reader wonders whether the IPKat or any of his readers has come across an author representation statement which a contributor to a journal is asked to sign before that journal agrees to publish a paper, stating that the paper being submitted is his or her own work and does not infringe any person's patents.  The reader continues: "Signing statements about not infringing other people's copyright I can understand ..  but other people's patents?"  This Kat has a wide experience of being asked to sign things handed to him by publishers -- and sometimes even agrees to sign them -- but he has never seen one of these before and certainly wouldn't dream of signing it if it led to him having to indemnify anyone in respect of some weird and wonderful US patent. What about everyone else?