Monday miscellany

Friday came and went -- and the IPKat was too busy chasing his tail to notice that he hadn't posted his usual reminder to check the Forthcoming Events page. There are plenty of seminars, events, conferences and other social gatherings listed, so do take a look!


Around the weblogs.  First, congratulations to IP Finance on securing its 1,000th email subscriber! Now for the serious stuff. This week's A to Z tour of official African intellectual property websites takes Afro Leo to the Republic of Djibouti, where online is evidently not the place to be.  New PatLit blogger Michael Thesen has got off to a roaring start with two excellent posts on calculation of damages via the licence analogy and the private and social costs of patent trolls.  Online publication of next month's issue of the Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice is the excuse for airing the editorial on jiplp: it's "L'Oréal, eBay and tyranny of the unknown". 1709 Blog's Ben Challis reviews some big issues relating to the new Facebook Music service here. IPKat blogger Jeremy's soulmates in pedantry on IP Draughts wax lyrical on the problems of using "will" or "shall" in contracts, many of which can be cured by using "must".

Feeling FRANDly?  The Oxford University Press quarterly Journal of Competition Law & Economics (JCLE) is something that catches this Kat's attention from time to time. Every so often it features an article that is of great interest to the IP community. One such article in the current issue (vol.7, no.3) is "Fair, Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory (FRAND) Terms: a Challenge for the Competition Authorities" by Mario Mariniello (a member of DG Competition's team). According to the abstract,

"Standards contribute to increase welfare to the extent that they reduce production costs and increase products' value to consumers. The adoption of a standard can, however, raise competition concerns. After the adoption of the standard, the chosen technology may lack effective substitutes. The owner of an intellectual property (IP) right essential to the technology may indeed use the additional market power that may be gained through standardization (competitors being absent ex-post) to charge higher prices to “locked-in” licensees. To mitigate such a hold-up risk, standard setting organizations usually require patent holders to disclose their relevant IP rights ex-ante and/or to commit to license IP on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms. This article suggests a methodology to assess whether FRAND commitments are violated, from a competition perspective. The proposed methodology extends the framework proposed by Cecilio Madero and Nicholas Banasevic by outlining four necessary conditions for an ex-post licensing behaviour to be considered anticompetitive, in violation of FRAND commitments".

There's no algebra and plenty for IP strategists to think about, which makes a pleasant change from some law-and-economics pieces this Kat has unsuccessfully sought to read in recent years.

ICANN has now launched a micro website for new generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs), which you can access here, and is also promoting a six-minute video which you can view here. ICANN President and Chief Executive Officer Rod Beckstrom says it will be “the definitive source for any and all information relating to the gTLD program, for applicants, potential applicants or simply the curious”.  If any domain-name savvy reader would like to put this definitive source through its paces and review it for this weblog, this Kat would be happy to hear from that good soul.


Better late than never, says the IPKat [and better early than late, says the ever-realistic Merpel]. On 29 July of this year the IPKat posted this report ("When is a secret not a secret?") on the decision of Mr Justice Arnold in LG Electronics Inc v Sony Europe Ltd, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe Ltd, Sony Computer Entertainment Inc and Sony Corporation. In so doing, the Kat lamented that the decision, which looked like an interesting one, had not yet been posted on BAILII. Well, it has now and you can read it here, thanks to a tip-off from one of the Kat's most observant friends.

Monday miscellany

Red Cross, not. The German Federal Government has honoured Alison Brimelow (Chair of the Intellectual Property Institute and former President of the European Patent Office) by awarding her the Commander’s Cross of the Order of Merit (Grosses Bundesverdienstkreuz). At the award ceremony Federal Minister of Justice Birgit Grundmann made particular mention of Alison's pioneer role as the first woman President of the EPO and her achievements in reforming and guiding the Office through a time of financial crisis, as well as her personal engagement in the life of her adopted city of Munich. The IPKat adds his own personal congratulations and is particularly pleased to see Alison get some recognition, following the rough time she had at the EPO. He notes that, having been awarded the status of Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) from the British government, she is now commanding both the Germans and the British. Merpel worries about the German cross itself, which is definitely red and unquestionably a cross: is there, perchance, a likelihood of confusion with another, certainly well-known cross of the same hue, she innocently speculates ...

Changing of the guard. From the IPKat's friend Margaret Llewelyn comes news that Bart Kiewiet (the first President of the Community Plant Variety Office) has stepped down, to be replaced by the CPVO's Head of Legal Affairs Martin Ekvad. Martin also has experience of life in private practice, with Linklaters in Brussels and Magnusson Wahlin Advokatbyrå in Stockholm. The Kat wishes both Bart and Martin all the best. Merpel is hoping for an improvement at CPVO, where her site search for catnip proved quite fruitless.

Nice work, if you can get it.  The IPKat let out a little growl not long ago about the fate of the 10th edition of the Nice Classification of goods and services for trade marks.  Gratifyingly, at last week's MARQUES conference in Baveno (reported extensively on the Class 46 weblog), Marcus Höpperger, Acting Director of the World Intellectual Property Organization's Trademarks, Industrial Designs Law Division, name-checked the IPKat and the concern of his readers and gave them the good news that the 10th edition will indeed be operative from 1 January 2012. Readers can enjoy a taste of the future by clicking here, while bearing in mind the fact that, until close of play in December 2011, it is the ninth edition which remains in force.

Good luck Gillian.  For the past 16 years Gillian Ellis has masterminded a succession of intellectual property conferences for CLT conferences, including this week's Handbags at Dawn IP in the Fashion Industry event.  Now she is leaving conference organising, in search of fresh adventures. The IPKat wishes her well in her new endeavours, recalling with pleasure and affection the many polished performers on today's IP stage who began their public speaking careers on one of Gillian's programmes.

A plague on both their houses? The IPKat's official Myriad-watcher Chris Torrero has informed him that the US Federal Circuit has issued an order that would look a bit sparse even as a Tweet: with just one word—“Denied”—the Circuit has dashed both parties’ requests for a rehearing by the three-judge panel that so controversially decided the case in the first place. According to the Genomics Law Report (here), the parties have 90 days to file a certiorari petition, asking for Supreme Court review.

Around the weblogs.  The Latin American intellectual property blog IP Tango has been extraordinarily lively of late, with over 30 bright and breezy IP posts -- split between the English and Spanish languages -- over the past fortnight.  In "Venezuela: a tormenting week" (here, with links to earlier posts), Patricia Covarrubia records the ups and downs of IP protection and activity in that remarkable country.  This week's tour by Kingsley Egbuonu of African countries without an official web presence for their industrial property and copyright offices takes Afro-IP to the Republic of the Congo (not to be confused with the Democratic Republic of the Congo).  The Pirate Party's Dirk Poot takes a critical but reasoned look at the recent decision of the European Union to go for copyright extension for sound recordings, here -- and does not like what he sees. Meanwhile, IP Draughts' Mark Anderson takes up the topic of professional rankings which Kat team member Neil raised last week, and Seattle Trademark Lawyer Michael Atkins explains how there is property in the word 'Realtor' here.

"We aim to please ..." At the opening session of last week's MARQUES Conference, Shane Smyth (FRKelly, Dublin) wowed the crowd with a remarkable application to register a trade mark in Ireland which, though emanating from an individual applicant -- one John Clooney of Rathaspick, Athy, Co. Laois -- must surely have been drafted  by a patent attorney.  The hand-drawn sign for which registration was sought consisted of the words "Piddlepath & Parking" together with a PP device.  The patent attorney? Who else would dream up a specification for Class 45 like this:

"A public service system for directing motorists from outside a town to a public convenience. Incorporating a sewage system and three or more short term parking spaces adjacent to the said public convenience". 

Monday miscellany

Plants and steak ...

Do you like plants with your steak stake? If so, you'll be pleased to know that the European Commission invites stakeholders to register for the EU Plant Variety Rights Conference which takes place on 11 October. According to the rhubarb rubric

"The Conference on EU Plant Variety Rights in the 21st Century aims to gain a clear view on the position of the various stakeholder groups with regard to the recommendations made in the evaluation report. 

The subject is of growing importance [The Department of Unintended Funnies obviously gave this one its blessing] in light of the modern society's dual challenge of feeding a growing world population at a time when the globe experiences climate changes that will inevitably impact agriculture and livelihoods. New and improved plant varieties are pivotal [This Kat has never seen a plant variety pivot at all, though he has read all about Triffids] in ensuring better yields and adaptability to changing climatic and environmental conditions, thereby contributing to long-term food security. 

In addition, biological diversity is an essential source of material for breeding crops. Intellectual property rights, such as CPVR, foster the investment environment in the research and development of new and improved plant varieties to the benefit of farmers and society in general.

For further information click here. To register for the conference (deadline 30 September) click here

All Black sheep

While the rest of New Zealand has been getting excited by the Rugby World Cup 2011, the IPKat's friend and unashamed IP enthusiast Elena Szentivanyi (Henry Hughes Patent and Trade Mark Attorneys) was quite properly more interested in the news that the Trade Marks Amendment Bill was read for the third time -- and passed. Royal assent is expected in the next couple of days.  This momentous news may have those who have been busily participating in New Zealand's main preoccupations: cheering on the All Blacks and rearing sheep.  An update on this very development can be found on the Henry Hughes website here.

IFRRO calls for orphans to be managed.  If rearing sheep requires good management skills, does the same apply to orphans? Not real human orphans, but orphan works, we should explain.  A neat little piece on Intellectual Property Watch explains:

The International Federation of Reproduction Rights Organisations (IFRRO) has submitted comments on the proposed European Union directive on orphan works, which aims to increase legal certainty for use of creative works whose copyright holders cannot be found. The group, which represents collective management organisations, authors and publishers, called for collective management and licensing for orphan works. 

“Orphan works should be administered through collective management and licensing ... IFRRO members already have experience from administering uses of such works. Regulation and establishment of conditions for uses of an orphan work should be as decided by authors and publishers of the categories of works concerned. In accordance with the principle of subsidiarity ['subsidiarity' is a magic word, often invoked by anyone who wants to get on with their business -- or someone else's -- without all those worries about meddlesome European laws getting in the way], the Directive should be without prejudice to the right of Member States to implement different solutions at national level”.

The IPKat would have been surprised if IFRRO had called for anything else. Organisations involved in the collective management of copyright works don't have many areas into which they can export their expertise, and this happens to be one of them.

Phone hacking has taken a back seat in the United Kingdom pecking order of hot topics to debate. In its prime, this topic gained sufficient momentum to result in the closure of a famous newspaper after 168 years in print (see earlier Katpost here).  Now it has dropped down the rankings, somewhere below some miserable financial figures and sundry sports and weather events.  If you pine for the blanket coverage and like something with a little wit, the Rebekah Brooks Song, thoughtfully forwarded by one of our more discerning readers, might just bring a smile to your face.

Monday miscellany

Many IPKat followers were holidaying when the Kat announced Boliven's special deal for readers -- a free full one-month trial of the BolivenPRO search facility. So if the thought of ploughing through over 100 million peer-reviewed documents excites you, this could be your golden opportunity. Details of how to register for the special offer can be found here.


While on the subject of special offers, there are a couple of conferences coming up for which IPKat readers can claim a 10% discount. They are as follows:

• 28 September 2011, Online Brand Protection 2011, organised by Informa at Le Meridien Piccadilly, in the heart of London. Hear from speakers from international organisations as they discuss these and a host of other issues critical for brand protection professionals. Quote VIP Code FKW82229IPKL when you register. Full details are available here.
  
  
• 6 October 2011, Social Media & the Law, held at the very comfy and convenient Millennium Knightsbridge, London and organised by Informa: "The essential event for everyone involved in navigating the legal challenges of exploiting social media and user-generated content". Quote VIP Code FKW82232IPKL on registering. Full details are available here.

A word of appreciation is never amiss, and this Kat thinks it's nicer to express one's gratitude to someone while they are still alive rather than save it all up for their obituary.  Thank you, Adam Smith, for all your hard work, clear thinking, investigative reporting, incisive comments and unorthodox dress sense during your stint writing for World Trademark Review.  Adam is off to study for a Master’s degree in science journalism and we all wish him well.  Well-wishers can hunt Adam down via LinkedIn here.

Around the weblogs.  IP Finance has posted a couple of hefty contributions of late.  In the first, Keith Mallinson (WiseHarbor) defends the non-interventionist approach which the EU takes towards horizontal cooperation agreements against the criticisms levelled by the European Committee for Interoperable Systems (ECIS), which supports the mandatory disclosure of the most restrictive licensing terms for patented IP in the purportedly different “software” sector.  By the way, if you are interested in patents and standards within the telecoms sector, you can follow Keith now on Twitter at @WiseHarbor. The second, by IPKat team member Neil, focuses on how the impact and the cost of piracy varies so much from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, asking why this might be so.  Elsewhere, PatLit's saga of the Octopus litigation in its PCC Pages series has reached episode 38, with a discussion of what to do when the alleged infringer doesn't seem to be complying properly with a discovery/disclosure order.

Monday miscellany

There a couple of surveys out there in which readers might like to participate on their return from holidays. The IPKat's own survey (which you can find at the top of the side bar on the left hand side of his home page) is on what is the best way to deal with those dreadful folk who lose Community trade mark oppositions and then don't pay the admittedly small costs orders that are made against them. The second, on the Class 99 weblog, asks readers what they feel about the prospect of being able to file design registrations online rather than the old-fashioned way (you can find that survey at the top of the side bar on the right hand side of the Class 99 home page).

If you've a bit of spare time and want a review of the current British phone-hacking scandal which is both informative and stimulating, it's worth taking a look at  "The Big Story: The Police and the Press Hand-in-Hand", an Iran-based PressTV production.  This YouTube clip was drawn to the Kat's attention by Christopher Sherliker (Silverman Sherliker LLP), who is among the contributors to the programme. It raises s number of questions not merely concerning the symbiosis of the press and the law enforcement agency but also regarding the distribution of responsibility and blame in the fall-out that followed the News of the World fiasco.

Leigh Martin (Clarion Solicitors) has written to inform the IPKat of his latest venture, into the world of bicycling for a good cause.  He's currently in training for a coast-to-coast bike ride which will cover 170 miles in 3 days. He is proposing to pedal the Way of the Roses route, which runs from Morecambe to Bridlington, setting off on 14 September. Among the team of cyclists is IP and commercial litigator Simon Young, whose daughter Bel has been paralysed from the neck down after falling from a climbing frame and now depends on a ventilator. The cyclists are seeking to raise funds for the Being Bel Trust, has been set up to raise funds to pay for adaptations of the family home, the specialist equipment and care that Bel will need for the foreseeable future to help make her life as normal and rewarding as everyone can hope it to be -- and also to maintain Bel’s body in the best possible condition in the event that future advances in spinal injury surgery may be able to treat Bel and people like her.  Leigh adds:

"I would be immensely grateful for any pledge you feel you can make towards this cause. If you would like to make a donation to The Being Bel Trust, please could you contact Merle Riley on +44 (0) 113 222 3225 or email Merle at merle.riley@clarionsolicitors.com to let us know how much you would kindly like to sponsor us for".

The IPKat is very touched by this appeal and looks forward to responding to it in paw-son.

Comoros: great flag, shame
about the internet ...

Around the blogs. The jiplp weblog carries a pre-publication chance to read the Current Intelligence notes of Joel Smith and Joanna Silver (Herbert Smith LLP) on L'Oréal SA v eBay International and of fellow Kat Matt Fisher (UCL) on Albert Packaging v Nampak.  The European Copyright Code is getting some enthusiastic promotion from its supporters, as the 1709 Blog reports here.  Afro-IP's A to Z tour of official IP websites in Africa travels to the Comoros archepelago, where there are none.  Meanwhile, the MARQUES Class 46 blog has a call to its European trade mark readers to make the INTA's Trademark Reporter a bit more European, not to mention some miserable news for anyone who thinks it's easy for a company with a trade mark portfolio like Coca-Cola's to oppose an application to register a mark in Switzerland on the assumption that one's marks come with some sort of fame or reputation.

Orphan books in search of a reviewer.  The Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice (JIPLP) has instituted a new, proactive policy for reviewing books sent to it.  A week and a half ago it put out this plea for reviewers for some books. So far, not one single person has offered to review the US Patent Proecutor's Desk Reference or 'Expert Privilege' in Civil Evidence.  If you think you may be qualified to tackle reviewing either of those titles and wish to do so, please email Sarah Harris, if possible by 8 September, to express your interest.

Small and Medium Sized Enterprises on the long march ...  Working Groups of the UK's SME Innovation Alliance, which seeks to represent the views of SMEs working in innovation to Government, have been in dialogue with Government all through the summer as to how the UK's high technology SME sector can help rebuild the national economy. On 19 September SMEIA is holding a meeting at the London offices of Wragge & Co at which, among other things, speakers will report on the summer's activity and look forward to prospects to the future. The draft programme is here and members of the IP media are particular welcome to attend, so they can help spread the good word. To attend, contact Meeting Organisers Tim Crocker or Martin Lawrence.

Monday miscellany

Mark's dream: an entire module of the course will
be dedicated to calculating complex royalty distributions

In "Postgraduate diploma in IP transactions - an update", the IPKat's friend Mark Anderson tells us a bit more about his work on the programme for a 2-week residential course, which would form part of a proposed postgraduate diploma in IP transactions. He adds:

"The law faculty of a leading UK university has shown strong interest in hosting the course, so we are working up more detailed proposals. We hope to start running the course from Autumn 2012, although this timetable is tight for getting through the university's procedures".

If you are an experienced IP lawyer and are interested in helping to run the course, or are even mildly curious about how it will work, phone Mark on +44 (0) 1865 858 878 email him here.

Various good souls, of whom the first was the Kat's old friend Jim Davies (ElevationLegal), have reminded the IPKat that Rod Beckstrom is standing down as the Chief Executive Officer of ICANN.  You can see the official statement here. There's some speculation as to whether Rod will go the same way as the recently departed Chairman, Antipodean IP lawyer Peter Dengate-Thrush, who metamorphosed from the man tasked with pushing through the new gTLDs (much hated by most big brand owners) to being appointed chairman of Minds + Machines, a leading consultancy selling ... new gTLD registry services. The Washington Post is among those who are not impressed.

IQ Biometrix

BetaBeat ("The Lowdown on High Tech") carries this piece by Ben Popper, "Patent Trolls Come in All Shapes and Sizes", which Ben describes to the Kats as "a large investigative feature taking a deep dive into a single case of a bumbling patent troll", that troll being IQ Biometrix (which offers "facial identification solutions").  Ben spoke with many patent folk for the piece and he assures us that, whatever they may have thought about trolls, they all recommended this blog. Nice of you to say so, Ben.

The IPKat notes with interest that the European Patent Office has refused a patent for a modification of the highly addictive Tetris computer game. The decision in question is T 1782/09 Game apparatus / Bandai Co Ltd, a Technical Board of Appeal decision of 5 May 2011, in which it was held that the application was a "mixed" invention in which the non-technical aspects of the features which distinguished the invention from the closest prior art (this being the Tetris game itself) were nothing more than modified game rules which are barred from being patented since they're excluded subject matter under Article 52(2) of the European Patent Convention; to the extent that there were any technical features in the invention, they reflected nothing more than the technical implementation of these modified rules and were therefore obvious.


There's a fun appeal heading for the Court of Justice of the European Union in Case C-306/11 P XXXLutz Marken GmbH v Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market, Natura Selection SL, an appeal against the finding that the marks 'Linea Natura Natur hat immer Stil' and 'natura selection' were similar purely on the basis that both signs contained the word element 'natura', though that word element was not the dominant element of the earlier trade mark. Without knowing the facts or the reasons of the litigation so far, this Kat imagines that this is one of those cases that only German ingenuity can create. We may be left in the end with a special rule for comparing a six-word mark with a two-word mark where the second word of the six-word mark is identical to the first word of the two-word and both are three-syllable Latin words beginning with the letter "N".

The original World
War Two poster

The IPKat, who is always calm (except when he's having a rant ...) and perpetually carries on, has discovered that the slogan ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’ has been registered as a Community trade mark by a UK company based in Weybridge, its name being Keep Calm and Carry On Ltd.  Its stock in trade, if the company's website is anything to go by, is full of products carrying that slogan. The mark is a word mark only, but the appearance of the original World War Two poster (right), with the royal crown, have not been registered.

The United Kingdom is one of only a few countries that has Crown copyright.  If Crown copyright subsists in the trade marked slogan (and it is by no means certain that there would be any copyright at all in such a short, banal slogan), it would not have expired yet since the poster was never actually published during the war, so far as we are aware. However it is re-usable under the UK's Open Government Licence.  Under this licence

"You are free to:
copy, publish, distribute and transmit the Information;
adapt the Information;

On sale from Keep Calm
and Carry On Ltd for £8

exploit the Information commercially for example, by combining it with other Information, or by including it in your own product or application".

The Kat has been asked if he thinks that the Community trade mark registration could be challenged on the grounds that the slogan (i) had been widely used in the UK for some years and (ii) would not be recognised, at least in the UK, as indicating trade origin. Provisionally the Kat thinks that there is no challenge per se under (i), since prior use is not a ground on which a CTM can be nullified unless it establishes that the mark is non-distinctive, descriptive or suffers from some other defect which would prevent the relevant consumer from associating it with the owner's goods or services. (ii) however -- if it can be substantiated -- could be fatal to the registration.  Readers are welcome to share their comments, so long as they remember to keep calm ...

Monday miscellany

Venerable Cats (a throw, available
for $49.95 here)

"Dear venerable Kats" is always a good way to start an email which you hope this team of feline bloggers will take the trouble to read.  Reading on from this auspicious opening, it turned out that this email referred to a matter of some substance.  Its author writes:

"This is just a quick request for any tips you or your readers might have for extracting Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market (OHIM) opposition costs from reluctant [and presumably unsuccessful] opponents. 

Are you aware of any means by which those unwilling to pay can be compelled, reprimanded or shamed publicly as I'm unwilling to give up on €1,600 in costs that easily".

The IPKat calls upon all readers who know the tricks of the trade to advise this poor young man how to proceed in these circumstances. It's unfair that some churlish souls should oppose a Community trade mark application, lose their opposition and then refuse to pay up. Merpel says, never mind the sage advice, can't we just go ahead with the naming and shaming?


Some little while ago, a report on this weblog from Catherine Lee reviewed the litigation in between AFACT and iiNet on that ever-popular topic of whether internet service providers are liable for the sins of their subscribers in the lovely, sunny island of Australia.  Speculation was then rife as to whether that case would reach the High Court (despite or perhaps because of its name, it's the top court Down Under, where everything is upside down).  Anyway, thanks to Anna (they have so few people down there that surnames aren't really needed) the Kat can tell you that this litigation been granted special leave to appeal to the High Court.

The IPKat has learned from his friends at Dimock Stratton in Canada that the Ontario Court of Ontario has held that for the purpose of asserting jurisdiction, at least, a domain name can be considered a form of personal property in that beautiful and snowy jurisdiction. The case is Tucows.com Co. v Lojas Renner S.A., 2011 ONCA 548, August 5, 2011) and this recognition was a tool for enabling a company with ties to Ontario to bring a Brazilian defendant before the Court in Ontario. After taking a peep at various authorities, including the equally beautiful and snowy Sweden, the court said:

"From this brief survey, it can be seen that the emerging consensus appears to be that domain names are a form of property".

This would suggest that, in Canada at least, while the details of the defeat remain to be hammered out. the "domain names are not property" lobby has lost this war.

Patents and the Public Domain. Some readers may recall that, earlier this year, IPKat team blogger Jeremy was preoccupied with the interaction of the patent system with the public domain.  This was because he was preparing a study for his friends at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) on that very subject.  This paper has now been published on the WIPO website as document number CDIP/4/3/REV./STUDY/INF/2 [he had been hoping for a more exciting document number, but this was the only available at the time] on the bit of the website that's called "Projects for Implementation of Development Agenda Recommendations". The document itself is called Study on Patents and the Public Domain and you can read it here.  It's not all written by this Kat, incidentally: it also contains scholarly contributions from India, Colombia, Egypt, Ukraine and South Africa. If you get a chance to read it, please let the IPKat know what you think!

Around the weblogs.  "Judge invokes Monet, Picasso in Red Sole trade mark analysis" is Christopher Pett's take on the recent Louboutin v YSL saga, hosted on Art & Artifice here (this case comes up for discussion by Mar-Ellen Field and Annsley the AmeriKat in this year's Handbags at Dawn Fashion and IP conference on 22 September). There's gloomy news for anyone wanting to surf the IP offices of the Central African Republic, it seems, as Kingsley Egbuonu's survey of official African IP websites for Afro-IP reaches that tropical domain.  Class 99 reports that Kosovo has a new design law: we all look forward to seeing how IP infringements are litigated there. If you're about to get involved in inter partes trade mark proceedings before the UK's Intellectual Property Office, Class 46 summarises the latest practice note on case management: good news for those who hate long phone calls is that disproportionate ones will be terminated ...

Monday miscellany

The IPKat's Turkish friend, Professor Mehmet Artemel, has been busily putting together a new website, IP in Turkey, which is full of useful legal information concerning the framework of intellectual property in that lovely country. This website is still to be regarded as "work in progress", but this Kat is sure that it will grow into a valuable resource for those of us whose interests are not parochial but cross national borders.  Incidentally, those who are unfamiliar with IP in Turkey will be pleased to discover how closely its laws mirror those of the European Union -- and how great are the efforts that have been made to provide a judicial system that offers real hope to IP owners that their legitimate interests will be taken care of.

Milton Jones is not a name that is greatly known to this Kat, whose sorties into the world of the radio tend to be confined to cricket test match commentaries. Since these go on for five days at a time, that doesn't leave much for radio humour.  Anyway, at the recommendation of a fellow feline, Jody Giesser, this Kat listened attentively to "Milton Jones: International Diplomat" (here).  Writes Jody: "While catching up on some serious news over on the BBC website, I somehow stumbled on this routine by Milton Jones. Now it's not too often that geographical designations become part of a comedy routine!" Indeed, it isn't -- and there may be a good reason why. Merpel's plot-spoiler: Ginster pasties and Chelsea buns ("Chelsea is heavily dependent on the bun industry") get a mention.

Around the weblogs.  On the 1709 Blog, Ben Challis asks "Why did Google have to launch its cloud service without licences?"  The eighth in Kingsley Egbuonu's A to Z series of official African IP websites, hosted on Afro-IP, visits Cape Verde.  For the SPC Blog, Herwig von Morze adds his own perplexity over the Advocate General's Opinion in Medeva to the puzzlement of others, while on IP Finance the Kat's old friend Christopher Pett warns that tobacco brand owners in Australia may be entitled to compensation if their brands are subjected to that country's 'plain packaging' plans. On the same issue, David Brennan's piece on the Fortnightly Review, "Could plain tobacco packaging laws ground a non-violation complaint under the Australia-US FTA?", repays reading.

Monday miscellany

Try doing this when you've
only got paws!

The IPKat has just heard today that the total number of people who have registered for the half-day seminar on Initial Interest Confusion -- that US doctrine which we now seem to have migrated to Europe -- that he's so excited about has now reached the 43 mark. If you've not yet signed up and hope to do so, the details are all here. Don't leave it too late: the lunch is delicious but this Kat is useless at cutting cucumbers at speed.

Do we have an issue
with initial interest
confusion?

ATRIP is the International Association for the Advancement of Teaching and Research in Intellectual  Property, an organisation which this old Kat holds close to his heart since he is one of its founder signatories and was, back in the 1980s, Secretary when Professor William Cornish was President.  Anyway, the Kat learns that the 30th ATRIP Congress has just concluded in Singapore, where it was "benignly hosted by the IP Academy of Singapore and the Law Faculty of the National University of Singapore". The new President elect: is Professor Tana Pistorius and incoming members of the Executive are Professors Daniel Gervais, Susy Frankel, Loy Wee Loon and Jens Schovsbo.  They join re-elected members Professors José Antonio Gomez Segade, Christian LeStanc and Alberto Musso, not to mention the re-elected Treasurer Professor Alexander Peukert. The new President is Professor Graeme Dinwoodie, was installed as the new President of ATRIP for the period 2011-2013. Congratulations, everyone, and well done Professor Jan Rosén, who now steps down as President and can get back to normality!

Serbia welcomes legal software

A headline that caught the Kat's attention comes from the useful and entertaining IP newsletter which originates from his East European friends at Petosevic. The headline, attached to this news item, is "Serbian Scientists to Get Genuine Microsoft Software". He is embarrassed to confess that his first thought was to wonder whether they would know how to use the legal version.  Anyway, it seems that the Serbian government has struck a deal with Microsoft to supply the real thing to all scientists who participate in programmes financed by the Serbian government in the next four years. It is believed that a "significant discount" was negotiated, in a jurisdiction in which "a considerable amount" of locally used software is said to be illegal.  Merpel notes that the British tendency towards understatement appears to be spreading to the East.

Reading the book is the easy bit.
Don't forget the review
(source: Cartoon Clip Art)

Books for review. Just to remind you, the Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice's new policy for transparent and efficient reviewing of intellectual property books is here -- and another five books are up for review here. It may all seem a little tough, but the time has come to make sure that books are reviewed while they are still current, and that people shouldn't think that the receipt of a review copy is some some sort of reward for long service.  Behind every copy of a book that isn't reviewed is a disappointed author and a frustrated publisher!

Around the weblogs.  The 1709 Blog carries a special offer for its readers -- Edward Elgar Publishing is offering a generous 35% discount to anyone who buys one of its four latest copyright titles before 31 October 2011.  Details of the offer can be found here.  This week's A to Z tour of official African IP websites goes to Cameroon, where there's definitely more going on than in Burkina Faso or Burundi: details here.  IP Watch brings news of an accord between the European Union and India on that most sensitive of topics, the manner and extent to which EU customs authorities can stop the passage of generic pharmaceutical products on their somewhat indirect route from where they're made to where they are intended or supposed to be sold.  Censorship in Australia is the topic of Simone Blakeney's hot-off-the-press post on Art & Artifice. Oh, and IP Draughts has another dose of howlers made when preparing a document for signature. 

Rumours. The Kat has wondered about who might be replacing the recently-elevated pair of Patents Court judges for England and Wales (see here for news of the elevation).  Someone has whispered in his ear that it might be worth putting a few quid on Mr Justice Vos to move over to the Patents Court. He is believed to have something of a science background and was recently given a fairly easy intellectual property dispute to handle in United Airlines Inc v United Airways Limited, noted by this Kat here. The other vacancy may then be filled from within the worthy ranks of the IP bar. Or then again, it may not ...

Monday miscellany

After a long, hard day on the road, there's nothing that relaxes this Kat more than firing up his faithful desktop and burrowing furiously into the heaving pile of emails -- naturally in reverse chronological order -- in the hope of turning chaos into a pale imitation of good order. So now, having done with the driving, the delving and the deletions, he turns his attention at last to the main matter of the day -- the Monday Miscellany.

First up for the Kat's attention is something so ephemeral, sweet and so fragile that one could hardly imagine how even the most enforceable intellectual property rights might keep it under control. For those who are so minded, it is possible to follow @365musicTweets. As composer Mikel Chamizo explains, "365 Musical Tweets A daily musical tweet from the 1st of January to the 31 of December 2011. Each composition has a maximum extension of 140 notes and reflects my daily life". Mikel opts for the benefits of both copyright and patronage. States a message on his site: "© 365 musical tweets and all the music it contains are copyright of Mikel Chamizo. Sponsored by the Baskische Musikvereinigung".

Teotihuacan: did Mexico inspire
the legendary Toblerone brand?

Mr Maza from Mexico has written proudly to tell the Kat ollective how in his lovely country the local Intellectual Property Institute has been bestowing "famous" status to some "trade marks of popular companies" with the idea of protecting such marks in all classes so that no-one else can use them. He adds: "I think this is the only country that gives this certification".  The IPKat thinks not and wonders whether his readers would like to help compile a list of countries that compile lists of famous marks.  Merpel adds: Mexico may be the only company that grants "famous mark" status to more than one company in respect of the same mark ...

Peggy never imagined that
using a hand-held reading
device could be such fun

Around the weblogs.  As may be apparent by now, this Kat loves lists, which is why he was so enchanted by this list on the ever-excellent IP Draughts of "Top 10 howlers when preparing contracts for signature". These are basic howlers that apply everywhere in contract law, not just in intellectual property, so don't expect to find refinements such as an absence of termination provisions or a commencement date -- but it's strange how often words like "draft" aren't properly removed from the draft before it's ready to sign. Elsewhere on the IP blogosphere, Leigh Harrison's Open Letter on the 1709 Blog, about the predations of copyright piracy and the option of withholding one's work, has received both bouquets and brickbats. The jiplp weblog carries a very readable little note on breach of confidence and the 'springboard' doctrine (click here if you either can't remember it or never knew it in the first place).

Bulgarian sausage:
etting into a pickle

Bulgarian sausage war sizzles.  Via the Kat's friends at Petosevic comes news that, last month, Bulgaria’s Commission for Unfair Competition ordered one of the largest Bulgarian meat-processing companies -- Mekom JSC -- to pay a fine of approximately Euro 168,000 (US$236,000) for making and selling a flat sausage called KARLOSKA Krepost.  You may think "Karloska is a pretty name for a girl", but to a Bulgarian it's a sausage that is uncannily and unlawfully similar to KARLOVSKA Lukanka -- a protected designation of origin for the traditional Bulgarian flat sausage (lukanka) which originates in the the central Bulgarian town of Karlovo. According to the Commission, the similarity in appearance between the two products, their brand names and the font used on the packaging was potentially misleading to consumers: KARLOVSKA and KARLOSKA, both written in capital letters, can be viewed as identical since the absence of a single letter can be understood as a mistake or simply go unnoticed. The word “krepost” (meaning "fortress"), which is intended to distinguish Mekom JSC’s product, is written in almost invisibly small and scarcely legible letters against a dark background that hides the word. Mekom claimed its product was named after a historical personality and an event, the conquest of an old Silistrian fortress by the 15th-century knight called Karlos-- but the Commission was unimpressed. 

Monday miscellany

The programme is no longer
under wraps ...

Will you be attending the half-day seminar on 7 September on Initial Interest Confusion? It's held in the pleasant and congenial Lincoln's Inn home of barristers' chambers Hardwicke and features IPKat team members Annsley (the AmeriKat) Merelle Ward and Jeremy. In case you're wondering why this topic has been chosen, it has been quite controversial in the United States and, in a recent judgment in Och-Ziff, Mr Justice Arnold considered that it was actually part of both EU and United Kingdom trade mark law.  22 good souls have signed up for it already. Will you be joining them? Early booking is advised since the Hardwicke Library has limited space.  Click  here for all the details.

Last Thursday saw the emergence of the Report on EU customs enforcement of intellectual property rights: Results at the EU border - 2010, this being the European Commission's annual account of how it fared against the folk who misguidedly seek to bring counterfeit and other IP-infringing goods across the border into the lucrative pasture of the single market.  The figures show substantial increases in customs seizures, the number of detentions rising from around 43,00 to just under 80,000, in respect of goods with a retail value of €1 billion. Goods seized per detention have fallen, since the total number of goods detained has slipped from 117 million to 103 million, suggesting that importers are deploying a larger number of smaller consignments in the hope of making it more expensive and inconvenient to deal with them; the Commission adds that it is also a consequence of more goods being bought online.  Overall, most of the counterfeit goods originate from China, though India leads the way when it comes to fake condoms and medical products [Says Merpel, the trouble with these figures is that you can't be sure what they mean: does the increased number of border seizures mean that the importation of infringing goods is on the increase, or that customs are much better at spotting and detaining them?]  You can read the report for yourself here: it is only 32 pages in length and has lots of tables and diagrams.

Dating back to the days of the
Pyramids, the oldest surviving
scrap of an ancient Egyptian IP
Manual, deals with similarity
between figurative marks

The IPKat is sure he must have posted this query from a reader before, but can't find any evidence of his having done so which is why he is posting it again. The query runs like this:

"If you register a trade mark (either in the United Kingdom or as a Community trade mark) in block capitals, does this mean that your registration covers the mark in differing typefaces and in upper and lower case letters, or a combination of the two (i.e. some letters in upper case and some in lower case)?

The UK Intellectual Property Office's Work Manual states that a UK trade mark registered in block capitals covers the mark in differing typefaces and in upper and lower case letters. However, no legal authority (e.g case law, or statute, or statutory instrument) is cited in support of this assertion. Does anyone know of a case on this point?"

Please put this reader out of his misery -- and apologies if you've already done so!

Algernon never realised quite
how stress-free patent litigation
in England and Wales could be

International High-Technology Patent Litigation is the title of a most topical conference which LexisNexis is running in London on 27 September; it caught this Kat's eye last month (here) and its theme is largely comparative, looking at patent litigation in the ICT sector in England and Wales, Germany, The Netherlands, the US and China. Today the same Kat has been correcting the proofs of an article on patent litigation forum-shopping by the McDermott Will & Emery UK LLP pair of Gary Moss and Robert Lundie Smith. This article will be published in the near future in the Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice (JIPLP). Both the conference and the article appear to strike a more positive note about patent litigation in the British Isles than one might have heard ten of 15 years ago. Add to this the listing of Patents County Court judge Colin Birss QC in the Managing Intellectual Property international list of 50 IP movers and shakers and one can detect traces of a general feeling that patent litigation in England and Wales, if not actually good cheap fun, is less painful and more beneficial than once it was.  But why, the Kat wonders, is it always the same few European jurisdictions that get compared? We hear little of patent litigation in Switzerland, Denmark or Sweden, for instance, and not a great deal about France or Spain. How do they do things there? [Never mind how, says Merpel: do they do things there?]


Around the blogs.  Congratulations to the MARQUES Class 46 weblog for welcoming its 2,200th email subscriber. This week's Afro-IP A to Z tour of national IP websites visits Burkina Faso. The 1709 Blog carries a note on a piece of litigation in which News International came out on top, Ebden v News Int;l, in which the judge held that (among other things) a nearly-completed round of negotiation to use a video clip of a footballer having a fight didn't actually count as a promise to pay a large sum for it.  Art & Artifice records the sad demise of a Banksy original and also notes the IPO's report that the UK invests more money in the creation of artistic assets than it thinks it does.  The jiplp weblog explains the activities of COPE, the Committee on Publication Ethics, which can help journals deal with IP-sensitive issues such as plagiarism and attribution of authorship. Finally, SOLO IP laments the curious assumption that IP practitioners still use headed notepaper rather than add their address and professional details when they create a document that happens to be a letter.