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Category Archives: General Interest
Ministry of Sound releases Spotify Mash Up in UK High Court
Monday 2 September 2013 saw Ministry of Sound, the well-known dance music brand, launch UK copyright infringement proceedings against the music-streaming service Spotify on the grounds that it has refused to take down users’ playlists that copy many of Ministry’s compilation albums. (more…)
IPcopy during late July/August
The summer holiday season is winding down now but IPcopy has been busy throughout! Just in case you’ve missed the odd article or two, here’s a summary of what we’ve been on about since late July.
A stocktake of your IP
Today on IPcopy we are pleased to welcome guest contributor Annette Freeman:
This article by Ian Cockburn lists five reasons why businesses should identify, understand, account for and manage their intellectual property, the so-called “intangible assets” that often hide real and unexploited value. You might be surprised by some of these reasons. Let’s take a closer look:
IP challenges and solutions
Today on IPcopy we are pleased to welcome the return of guest contributor Annette Freeman (Freeman IP/K2):
In 2012 IQPC released a paper reporting on trends in IP as seen by owners and practitioners worldwide.
Some of the Key Findings make interesting reading: (more…)
3D printing – seminar review
On 26 June 2013 Field Fisher Waterhouse held an excellent afternoon seminar on “Developments in UK and EU patent law”. David Knight’s session on 3D printing (“3D Printing – A licence to infringe IP rights?”) was particularly interesting as it looked at the implications for intellectual property rights owners arising from the developing field of 3D printing.
In this post we provide a (hopefully accurate!) recap of David’s talk and a look at the world of 3D printing. (more…)
Patent Marking on Vintage Recreation Products – Inspired by Gretsch® Guitars
You may not believe it, but in her spare time, this IPCopy writer does occasionally turn to pursuits other than combing through Unitary Patent legislation (no, really). Not so long ago, she was perusing the website of Gretsch® guitars, on the brink of doing some damage to her wallet, and stumbled across something that caught her eye*.
Gretsch® has been around since the 1880s, and started out making banjos and ukuleles, soon progressing to guitars. Today, they focus on vintage-style guitars, some being recreations of earlier instruments. Why on earth might you care about this? Well, recreating the appearance of a vintage instrument is relevant to the important subject of patent marking (no, really).
Cycling, le Tour Cycliste Féminin and a case of trade mark infringement
On the 21st July 2013, Chris Froome became the second British person ever to win the Tour de France. It was a great day for Britain and for British cycling. The Tour has always been considered as the pinnacle of any professional road cyclist, anyone who wins the tour will have their name etched in cycling history forever, look at Lance Armstrong, he made his mark in cycling did he not?
However, how many people have heard of Nicole Cooke, first Brit and two time winner of the Tour de France … Féminin! You would have thought that that the Tour de France Féminin, would also be the highlight of the year for all female cyclists. Sadly due to the lack of public interest in women cycling, sponsorship each year for the tour was very hard to come by. For many years, stages were held inside cities because they would contribute money towards the tour; this in turn led to long transfers from one stage to the next. (more…)
UK Space Conference – July 2013 – Report
Gemma Sparrow of Keltie LLP and Adam Brocklehurst of K2 IP Limited visited the 2013 UK Space Conference in Glasgow last week. Here is their report from the conference.
Almost £200m of public investment has recently been announced in launcher, satellite, software and other UK space companies, and the government has set a target to ride the wave of this growing industry by capturing 10% of the global market by 2030. For example, £60m is to be invested in the SABRE engine for Reaction Engines’ Skylon space plane.
The Intellectual Property Bill – Freedom of Information plus Odds and Sods
Parliamentary copyright images are reproduced with the permission of Parliament
In the fifth part of a series on the Intellectual Property Bill, IPCopy summarises the proposals relating to the Freedom of Information Act plus some other remaining odds & sods that haven’t been covered in the earlier posts. [Note: this post looks at the IP Bill as originally published. We will revisit the IP Bill at a later date to look at amendments introduced in its passage through Parliament.]
Social Media Patents – Facebook
A “Facebook”
Recent news stories (Techcrunch, Guardian) have highlighted some patents that have recently granted to Facebook. The three patents mentioned in the articles relate to “Automatic Photo Capture Based on Social Components and Identity Recognition“, “Preferred images from captured video sequence” & “Image selection from captured video sequence based on social components“.
IPcopy has a passing interest in social media related patents (see Twitter articles here) and so we thought we’d take a closer look. (more…)
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