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With the relentless momentum of a rundown mobility scooter, the EU’s various legislative organs appear to be making progress in agreeing the final terms for a Regulation on the unitary patent and unified patent court. Compromises have been brokered and the word in Brussels is that the offending Articles 6-8 may be removed or replaced with something non-substantive. It appears that if the European Parliament adopts the Regulation in Mid-November then the Council may approve it in December or early January 2013. This could allow for the Regulation to come into force in the enhanced cooperation states of the EU (i.e. the EU less Italy and Spain) in late Spring of 2014.
IPcopy writers
Keltie LLP
K2 IP Limited
Doctor Who (IP – Hit or Miss?)
I say old chap. You haven’t seen my sonic screwdriver, have you?
Does The Doctor know his IP from his elbow?
Incidentally, just in case you’re wondering, there is an (admittedly tenuous) intellectual property (IP) connection to this story!
In the episode in question, Silence in the Library (trailer below), the Doctor and Donna are summoned to a planet sized library, The Library, via a message received on the Doctor’s psychic paper where they encounter a team of explorers led by Professor Song and funded by Mr Lux. The Doctor and Donna are encouraged to sign non-disclosure agreements upon encountering the team in order to ensure that their “individual experiences inside the Library are the intellectual property of the Felman Lux Corporation.”
It turns out that The Library has been deserted for 100 years following some kind of incident in which all the occupants of the Library disappeared. When things predictably start to go south the Doctor gets annoyed with Lux and declares “Mr Lux, right now, you’re in more danger than you’ve ever been in your whole life. And you’re protecting a patent?”
Just what does the Doctor mean by his reference to “protecting a patent”? Does it make sense from an IP context? Is it an IP hit or miss? And, am I over-thinking my Saturday night telly?
IP Hit or Miss?
Ever been watching a film or something on TV and noticed that the intellectual property (IP) reference that just cropped up in the script is wrong? No? Well, you probably manage to get out more than me.
To this author at least (patent attorney, tech nerd and SF geek) references to patents, trade marks and the like seem to pop up quite frequently in the entertainment media.
IP Hit or Miss? is an occasional series of articles that takes a light-hearted look at IP as it appears in the media (films, TV, news reports etc) as an excuse to talk about different IP topics. A vague rating of “IP hit or miss?” may also be given depending on how well the particular IP concept has been incorporated into the media in question.
Want to suggest a film, TV show or other reference that we can take a look at? Drop us an email or leave a comment below.
A brand-free zone
Guest contributor Annette Freeman writes:
When I visited Havana, Cuba back in the late 1990s, there were a lot of surprises. For a trade marks attorney, one of the most shocking was the brand-free atmosphere. Billboards displayed only public service announcements about saving water and so on, or the occasional “Vive la revolución!” Pharmacy shelves were lined with glass jars and plain white packages – not a brand to be seen. The only branded products I saw were Bacardi® rum, a local concoction called “Cuban Cola” (from Mexico), and a few venerable Cuban cigar brands.
Now, in Australia, cigarette producers and consumers are going to enter a similar Twilight Zone for trade marks, with Australia’s plain packaging legislation for tobacco products surviving a High Court challenge. This final route of appeal in the Australian legal system was always something of a last-ditch stand for the tobacco companies, as they had to reply on a constitutional argument – that the Australian government was depriving them of their property by banning use of their trademarks on the packs. Unsurprisingly, the Court held that no property was being taken, merely its use regulated.
Jay-Z and Beyoncé may have 99 problems but their trade mark ain’t one
Contrary to press reports, all is not lost for Jay-Z and Beyoncé in seeking to protect their daughter’s name as a trade mark.
At the start of this year, Jay-Z and Beyoncé sought to register their daughter’s name – Blue Ivy Carter – as a trade mark to provide them with the sole right to use the name for a whole variety of products, from basketballs and teething rings, to hair care products and sound recordings. The application was made in name of BGK Trademark Holding, a company whose sole member is Beyoncé.
It’s a question of design
Is this an iPad I see before me?
In the recently decided Samsung versus Apple case in the UK Court of Appeal, the court confirmed that Samsung did not infringe Apple’s registered Community Design No. 000181607-0001.
At paragraph 54 of the decision, Sir Robin Jacob stated: “If the registered design has a scope as wide as Apple contends it would foreclose much of the market for tablet computers. Alterations in thickness, curvature of the sides, embellishment and so on would not escape its grasp. Legitimate competition by different designs would be stifled”.
In light of the above and the decision as a whole it would appear the UK courts are going to give design registrations a fairly narrow scope.
IPcopyrich is currently at AIPPI 2012 and sends this piece about “Gangnam Style”
Koreans are understandably proud of the worldwide success of “Gangnam Style” by PSY, carried on the back of the viral success of the song’s video parodying the opulent consumer culture of Gangnam in Seoul. So much so, that at the opening ceremony of AIPPI2012 (one of the most important intellectual property conferences of the year) in Gangnam, the Korean AIPPI president broke off in the middle of his opening address to launch into the Gangnam “horseriding dance” – it was quite a sight, though as neither we nor anyone else has preserved this for you on YouTube, you’ll have to take our word for it. You could ask the Prime Minister of Korea, who was in the audience.
A light touch
It’s your turn to get the coffee.
Guest contributor Annette Freeman writes:
When it comes to enforcing your hard-won trade mark rights, there’s the right way to do it and the wrong way to do it. As the old cliché says, it is wise to choose your battles; and it is also wise to carefully consider your weapons. To mix a few more metaphors, too often trade mark owners use a sledgehammer to crack a nut.
How to avoid ‘Swiss-Cheese’ Registered Design Coverage in Europe
The European Union covers twenty seven member states at present. A single IP right for Registered Designs can be obtained relatively easily for low cost that will cover this whole area. However, if you take a look at the map of the EU it is apparent that there are several ‘holes’ in coverage for the non-EU countries in Europe. Key non-EU states includes Switzerland, Norway, Turkey and much of the former Yugoslavia, especially Croatia and Serbia. These countries can act as a source of parallel (so-called grey) imports into the EU and can be troublesome for IP holders who have rights limited to the EU. However, filling in these holes is actually a fairly straightforward matter and involves using the Hague System for International Design Registration.
Cadbury and the Colour Purple
Having been contested in the UK Courts for the last 8 years, the Cadbury decision of 1 October 2012 (Société des Produits Nestlé SA v Cadbury UK Ltd [2012] EWHC 2637 (Ch), 1 October 2012.) adds a little clarity to the murky waters of registrability of colour marks in UK trade mark law.
Guided largely by the Libertel decision in the CJEU (namely, that single colour marks may be registrable per se if described clearly and classified precisely through an internationally-recognised colour code system such as Pantone), Judge Birss QC moved one infant-step further and held that the context of the case must be assessed before any decision can be made on the registrability of a colour mark. Such assessment of the context of a case may include consideration of the limited availability of colours in relation to the goods and/or services in question and public perception of the mark. In Cadbury’s case, after consideration of the context of the case, its shade of purple was held by the High Court to be registrable in connection with milk chocolate products, though not the broader category of chocolate products in general.
Clearly, with around 100 years of evidence of use to support Cadbury’s claim to registration, the effects of this decision must be interpreted with some caution, though the focus on a general assessment of the context of a case is useful for other applicants wishing to register colour marks in the future.
Nick Bowie 17 October 2012
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