[The IPKat] Monday miscellany

[The IPKat IP Blog]

Monday, 19 January 2015

Monday miscellany

Calling all men!  Further to this morning's post on the Intellectual Property International Women's  Leadership Forum and this weblog's sidebar poll, the IPKat's friend Alicia has just been in touch from Managing Intellectual Property magazine (which is organising the event) to let him know that men are allowed to attend this event -- with observer status.   Incidentally, the redoubtable Merpel has lent her support to this event ...

The SPC Blog logo

Around the weblogs. The IPKat salutes The SPC Blog for its remarkable achievement of securing its 2,000th email subscriber. When this blog was started, back in 2008, its authors didn't think there were even 200 people out there who were sufficiently interested in pharmaceutical and agrochemical patent extensions that they'd want to sign up for a blog on this niche-within-a-niche topic -- and now the blog has ten times that number.  The cost of creating a new name for a brand is the subject of one of Mike Mireles' recent posts on IP Finance, though Mike points out that the real cost isn't creating it but the cost of establishing it in the marketplace. Questions of trade mark dilution and defamation in Nigeria are raised on Afro-IP in this post by Chijioke Ifeoma Okorie on the use of the term "yahoo yahoo".

A dinner by any other name would be as tasty ...

How IP-relevant can we make it? “The Future of EU Financial Regulation: Implications for competition and the UK’s place in Europe" is the title of the The 17th Burrell Competition Lecture and Dinner [sounds like a good name for a lecture, but an odd one for a dinner, thinks Merpel], which is coming up on Wednesday 4 February 2015.  The speaker is Jonathan Faull (Director-General for the Internal Market and Services, European Commission) and the venue is the Old Hall, Lincoln’s Inn. This event is organised by the Competition Law Association which, despite its name, has lots of intellectual property enthusiasts among its members. The topic of the lecture doesn't immediately suggest that it's going to be directed to IP issues -- but it's not hard to find points of connection.  At any rate, if you fancy attending, further details can be obtained here.

It's usually patent attorneys who come up with weird a and wonderful ways of describing the apparently obvious, but from a patent attorney -- James Gray (Partner and European and UK Patent Attorney, Withers & Rogers LLP) -- comes a glorious example of patentspeak from someone from outside the profession: Elon Musk.  The entrepreneur's Falcon 9 rocket encountered a 'rapid unscheduled disassembly' which, as James (katpat!) observes, means that it, er, blew up.

From Katfriend and IP enthusiast Catherine Pocock (Research Assistant, Queen Mary University of London and Assistant Editor, Queen Mary Journal of Intellectual Property) comes three snippets that are likely to interest many of our readers.

• First, somewhat reminiscent of this blog's feature about MIT's Top 50 disruptive companies (on which the AmeriKat commented here), MIT has now listedthe Top Technology Failures of 2014 which include feature Aereo's tiny antennae and Google Glass.
• Secondly the French Intellectual Property Bill is continuing its legislative adventure and is tabled for discussion in the National Assembly tomorrow, 20 Tuesday January 2015. Its consideration by the Senate has not yet been scheduled (more here).
• Thirdly, and still in France, internet copyright guard-dog Hadopi's 2015 budget was approved at 6 million Euro back in October, despite criticism that this exceptionally low allocation of funds would not let  Hadopi to carry out its duties and also despite criticism that there is insufficient clarity regarding Hadopi, Current reluctance to increase its funding for 2015 may be the way of snuffing it out altogether.

Thanks, Catherine, you have earned your katpat!

Not the place to find an answer to the EU's patent problems ...

German patent attorney and certified IP practitioner Ingve Stjerna has been energetically seeking the deep legal truth which so far has successfully evaded so many of Europe's finest policy-makers, legislators and judges when it comes to establishing a new legal order for patents in the European Union.  His latest contribution to the literature, "'Unitary patent' and court system – Advocate General’s Statements of Position: Superseded by reality", discussing Advocate General Yves Bot‘s Opinion in the Spanish nullity proceedings against the two Regulations on the unitary patent [an Opinion still not made available in English] may be accessed here. Ingve argues that, not for the first time, legal issues are subordinated to the political interest in the implementation of the “patent package” and notes the failure to address the inadequacy of legal protection at the European Patent Office in light of the recent events which culminated in the President's suspension of a Board of Appeal member.

Assuming that IDS stands for Information Disclosure Statement and is something to do with United States patent law, this Kat is drawing to the attention of his patent readers a new software tool that they may wish to play with. The link to it comes with an alarmingly brief and uninformative email from former patent lawyer Zeev Fisher, now CEO of Pekama, who writes:

We have now built an automated IDS generator and decided to release it for free, to make the patent paralegals of the world happier. It looks like the standard IDS form but when you start typing in the numbers of patents, patent applications and foreign patent references, the IDS Generator populates the rest of the information (patentee, date, etc.) and fills the form itself. This saves about 70% of the typing time and also serves to validate that the numbers are correct. The form that is generated is the official USPTO form. You can access it here:www.idsgenerator.com 

Thanks for letting us know, Zeev. Readers who have not come across the term IDS might want to note the explanation on Wikipedia, which opens

An information disclosure statement (often abbreviated as IDS) refers to a submission of relevant background art or information to the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) by an applicant for a patent during the patent prosecution process. There is a duty on all patent applicants to disclose prior art or background information that may be relevant to the patentability of the applicant's invention ... If a patent applicant knowingly or intentionally fails to submit prior art to the USPTO, then any patent that later issues from the patent application may be declared unenforceable. Furthermore, the duty to submit such relevant information to the USPTO lies not only on the applicant or inventor, but also on any patent attorney or other legal staff employed by the applicant. 

Art listed on an IDS, on its own, is not automatically considered prior art. "Mere listing of a reference in an information disclosure statement is not taken as an admission that the reference is prior art against the claims."

The International Association of Lawyers for the Creative Industries (ialci) is hosting a seminar on “Intellectual property – how to protect, manage & monetize the know-how & intangible capital of luxury & fashion brands” on 10 February 2015 at London's very fashionable Pullman London St Pancras. Further details are available if you click here.

Posted by Jeremy at 7:36:00 pm 0 comments

 

Labels: Monday miscellany

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With just six days to go, the IPKat's sidebar poll on IP and the International Women's Leadership Forum has attracted a wide array of opinions and little apparent consensus. Do please feel welcome to participate in this poll (which email subscribers will find on top of the left-hand sidebar on the IPKat's home page), which may have repercussions not just for women but for ethnic, religious and other special interest groups.

Around the weblogs 1. "Nespresso sues Espresso Club for using Clooney look-alike in advertisement" is the title of a blogpost from the IP Factor. The litigation, brought in Israel, has so far got no further than a failed attempt to secure a preliminary injunction: in the absence of either specific copyright or trade mark infringement, and with the legend "The actor is not George Clooney" cunningly placed in the top left hand corner of viewers' TV screens, the defendant looks as though it may have successfully stirred more than coffee. Over in The Netherlands, Sander Vermeulen's IP & ICT blog, in "Someone's child on your mug", relates the tale of  designer Yuri Veerman and reporter Dimitri Tokmetzis, whose Koppie Koppie website features mugs with random pictures of children from Flickr are for sale. This, he explains, is a joke with a serious message: Koppie Koppie was created to warn people that they should be more careful with the things they put on the internet.

Around the weblogs 2.  SOLO IP carries the fourth episode in the mini-series of posts on trade mark attorney Sally Cooper's office move, this time dealing with her mail and communications issues. The 1709 Blog hosts a short guest piece from Thomas Dubuisson on The Pirate Bay's curious habit of returning to haunt IP owners, while Ben Challis notches up a fresh CopyKat post.  Afro Leo posts on the Afro-IP blog on IP and legacy issues in South Africa.  Over on Class 46, former Kat Mark Schweizer tells us how domain name renewal snatching can constitute unfair competition, while another of our old colleagues, Laetitia Lagarde, regales readers with a feline fracas when Spanish word mark CLEAN CAT was able to ward off the threat of a Community trade mark application for a figurative mark containing the words CAT & CLEAN.

Patent Cooperation Treaty: new guide for applicants. The IPKat's very good friend Rosina from the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) has just reminded him that many readers of this weblog have expressed an interest in knowing when the special edition of the PCT Applicant’s Guide, prepared for students sitting the European Qualifying Examinations (EQE exams), is available.  We are all now excited to hear from Rosina that WIPO has just published the latest version in English and French. It contains the entire contents of the Guide as of 31 December 2014 and it may be downloaded in English here and in French ici.

Uniforms for EPO examiners?

Want to be a Patent Examiner at the European Patent Office? Of the fifty-plus comments which readers have added to Merpel's oh-so-innocent post last week, ""New career system" for EPO Examiners: take on extra work", here, at least one is too good to leave in the relative obscurity of the Comments column.  Plainly inspired by Monty Python's Lumberjack Song (YouTube here, lyrics here), the anonymous author must also have enjoyed reading blogger Eleonora's Katposts on the Deckmyn ruling and the defence of parody to an action for copyright infringement in the European Union, with which the following seems to comply:

I’m Examiner and I’m okay
I work all night and I work all day
(He’s Examiner and he’s okay
He works all night and he works all day!)

By day my thing’s examining
Idees for novelty
By night I earn my bonus
With new activities!

(By day his thing’s examining
Ideas for novelty
By night he earns his bonus
With new activities!
He’s Examiner and he’s okay
He works all night and he works all day!)

I will not shirk some packaged work
If it earns extra bunce
And those who just ignore this
Are clearly simply dunce!

(He will not shirk some packaged work
If it earns extra bunce
And those who just ignore this
Are clearly simply dunce!
He’s Examiner and he’s okay
He works all night and he works all day!)

I earn big fees, by doing these
New things outside my core
It pleases Billy Minnoye
And leaves me wanting more!

(He earns big fees, by doing these
New things outside his core
It pleases Billy Minnoye
And leaves him wanting more!
He’s Examiner and he’s okay
He works all night and he works all day!)

When do I sleep? Well, that can keep
To earn I’ll buckle down
And at the end I’ll give me
The best fun’ral in town!

(When does he sleep? Well, that can keep
To earn he’ll buckle down
And at the end he’ll give him
The best fun’ral in town!
He’s Examiner and he’s okay
He works all night and he works all day!
He’s Examiner and he’s okayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy
Heworksallnightandheworksallday!)

News from elsewhere.  A katpat goes to Chris Torrero for giving us a link to the Washington Post's piece, "There are now two U.S. trademark applications for ‘Je Suis Charlie,’ because of course there are". This item draws on Robert Ledesma's own hands-on empirical testing of the USPTO's responses to applications to register rallying cries as US trade marks.  There's also some tremendously welcome news from Italy, via the newsletter of Modiano & Partners, that continuing legal education is being introduced for Italian patent and trade mark attorneys.

Nottingham Law School, England, has a suite of postgraduate programmes that may appeal to readers of this weblog. You can explore the links below for details of the following:

• Professional Certificate in Trade Mark Practice
• Intellectual Property Litigation and Advocacy
• Certificate Intellectual Property Basic Litigation Skills - Patent Attorney
• Certificate Intellectual Property Basic Litigation Skills - Trade Mark Attorney

Nottingham: home of the other Robin

There's also a Certificate in IP Basic Litigation Skills. This course runs subject to it attracting a minimum cohort of 20, so if you want to do it you might want to bring a friend.  The remaining teaching date for the new Basic Litigation Skills for Patent Attorneys 2014/15 is 2 to 6 June 2015, and the remaining teaching date for the new Basic Litigation Skills for Intensive ITMA students 2014/15 is 3 to 6 June 2015. Further information about these Certificates can be found below by clicking the relevant links:

• Certificate Intellectual Property Basic Litigation Skills - Patent Attorney
• Certificate Intellectual Property Basic Litigation Skills - Trade Mark Attorney

Call for submissions. The Indian Journal of Intellectual Property Law is calling for submissions for its 2015 issue. Details can be found in its guidelines for contributors here. Submissions should be mailed to ijipl.su...@gmail.com and a copy marked to submi...@ijipl.com. Queries may be directed to the same IDs, but please write “Query” in the subject line. The Editors may also be contacted here. Please do not direct your queries or send your submissions to the IPKat or Merpel ...


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Posted By Blogger to The IPKat on 1/26/2015 10:15:00 am