Wednesday whimsies

Yesterday evening Professor Toshiko Takenaka gave the PatLit seminar, "Patent litigation in the US and Japan: what's the difference?" A brief report and link to her PowerPoint presentation can be found here.


Just before he chaired Professor Takenaka's talk (above), IPKat team member Jeremy was giving a presentation, "From Pirate Bay to Pirate Party", at Informa IBC's International Copyright Law 2009 Conference. You can see his comments in brief and view his PowerPoints here.


The Swiss have either, depending on your opinion, struck a brave blow on behalf of common sense or scored a monumental own-goal in terms of their credibility as a trade mark-protecting jurisdiction. What have they done? They've ruled that iPhone [not to be confused with the eye-phone, right] is a descriptive term and therefore unregistrable in respect of, er, iPhones ...


On the subject of eyes, the World Intellectual Property Organization can take some credit for hosting a meeting on Monday with various United Nations specialized agencies on the need for closer inter-agency collaboration in favour of visually impaired persons (VIPs): an agreed VIP Initiative will aim "to facilitate and enhance access to literary, artistic and scientific works for the blind, visually impaired and other reading-disable persons ..." [The IPKat is struggling to suppress the desire to express the hope that this will be of some benefit to the judges in the annual Turner Prize competition].


The topics of privilege, practising certificates and regulation of solicitors in the UK are raised by seasoned IP practitioner Filemot, writing on the SOLO IP Blog. She says: "If you are happy that communications between you and your client can be disclosed in any subsequent litigation, then it does not matter. However if your practice is likely to involve giving frank advice as to infringment risks and freedom to operate you might want to keep your privilege".
Wednesday whimsies Wednesday whimsies Reviewed by Jeremy on Wednesday, December 09, 2009 Rating: 5

1 comment:

  1. Has the IPKat seen the following bullet point in the BBC key points from the pre-budget report?

    "New 10% tax on income from patents to boost science development"

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8403636.stm

    ReplyDelete

All comments must be moderated by a member of the IPKat team before they appear on the blog. Comments will not be allowed if the contravene the IPKat policy that readers' comments should not be obscene or defamatory; they should not consist of ad hominem attacks on members of the blog team or other comment-posters and they should make a constructive contribution to the discussion of the post on which they purport to comment.

It is also the IPKat policy that comments should not be made completely anonymously, and users should use a consistent name or pseudonym (which should not itself be defamatory or obscene, or that of another real person), either in the "identity" field, or at the beginning of the comment. Current practice is to, however, allow a limited number of comments that contravene this policy, provided that the comment has a high degree of relevance and the comment chain does not become too difficult to follow.

Learn more here: http://ipkitten.blogspot.com/p/want-to-complain.html

Powered by Blogger.