IPCrunch

The IPKat is always curious to learn of the quaint and endearing customs and practices of his Balkan brethren. Indeed, while this Kat does not actually have a Christmas tree, he thinks that they are very pretty and greatly approves of the practice of placing cheerfully-wrapped parcels on their branches, just out of reach of the children for whom they are destined, as an incentive to them to grow a little taller. He was therefore enthralled to read how customs officials from the FYR of Macedonia, in the course of their regular border patrols round Bogorodica over the Christmas period, seized no fewer than 4,950 tiny little Christmas tree-shaped air fresheners. These air fresheners originated in Turkey and were discovered in the luggage of a Kosovo citizen. The smuggling of bibles and other religious perquisites is a well-known feature of life in some of the world's less tolerant and more repressive regimes. However, this is the first occasion on which this Kat has heard of the...

We haven't much discussed the connection between culture and IP, especially copyright, although it has been an important theme, for example, of Larry Lessig's work. The point being that the sharing of ideas, themes, and common experience including art and music, is what makes up culture. IP and copyright, especially in its current excessive form, is a threat to the idea of culture - although judging by piracy statistics, culture appears to be winning. Christophe German directed my attention to %26lt;a href="http://www.diversitystudy.eu/es... UNESCO study on diversity%26lt;/a%26gt; - meaning in this case cultural diversity - see especially page 10 in the executive summary where copyright is rightfully recognized as one of the primary threats to cultural diversity. I'd also like to direct your attention to %26lt;a href="http://www.culturalgenocideres... blog%26lt;/a%26gt; which in addition to discussing the broader legal and...

By Dennis Crouch The USPTO's Board of Patent Appeals (BPAI) has an incredibly large backlog of ex parte appeals pending – more than 25,000. In 2006, that figure was less than 1,000 pending appeals. Since then, the backlog has grown...

%26lt;a href="http://www.freiheit.org/files... of a conference in Potsdam last October%26lt;/a%26gt;. In addition to some invaluable history and analysis - I found especially interesting the article by Stan Liebowitz. Stan is unique among economists in being strongly in favor of copyright, even in its current exaggerated form. What I found striking about his article is that he seems to have given up on the economic argument in favor of copyright and turned to a moral argument. If Stan can't defend the economics of copyright anymore, nobody can.

After a fruitless afternoon searching for suitably modest artwork involving the terms 'cat' and 'underwear' the IPKat pauses for reflection .... Late last year, this Kat brought you an 'IP-feel-good-story' of counterfeit clothes being given to the charity His Church, where they were de-branded and distributed to those in need. See KatPost here. Today she is pleased to learn from the BBC what the Milton Keynes Council’s Trading Standards team has done with more than 500 items of counterfeit clothing (part of the booty from previous raids which seized more than 2,500 counterfeit items from a market stall in the area) -- including fake Calvin Klein underwear and Foo Fighter and Prodigy T-shirts. The illicit garb is being donated to the city's Winter Night Shelter Project. The project uses seven church buildings across the city and relies upon volunteers to provide shelter, hot food and warm clothing for up to 15 people per night who would otherwise be sleeping on the streets. This Kat...

Simply stated, the OPEN Act would be completely and totally ineffectual and, therefore, it must be opposed. There is simply no point in enacting more pointless legislation, we have enough pointless legislation already. Content creators cannot create in a vacuum devoid of economic reality. If you take eyeballs away and/or provide things for free that are supposed to be paid for you are causing injury and making it all the more difficult to be a content creator. Think about it for a second. The content that you most value, is that created by commercial enterprises or people just doing it for free as a hobby in their spare time? If you are honest with yourself we both know the answer.

Members of the World Intellectual Property Organization, in the company of indigenous groups from around the world, have entered into eight days of intensive negotiations to try to agree on a draft text for an instrument on the protection of genetic resources. Related Articles:Draft WIPO Instrument On Genetic Resources Shows Lists Of Options Decisive Week Ahead For Protection Of Traditional Knowledge, Genetic Resources WIPO Members To Work Toward Treaty On Folklore, Traditional Knowledge, Genetic Resources

It's big, it's black and it's hugely serious. No, the IPKat isn't talking about the cloud hovering ominously over the Eurozone; he means the Black Book, a.k.a. the CIPA Guide to the Patents Acts [Explanatory note for newcomers to this weblog and to IP: CIPA is the Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys. While it is a UK-based body, its membership, the contents of its publications and the attendance at its impressive annual Congress testify to CIPA's commitment to a wider world in which those of us who are concerned in protecting, commercialising and sharing inventions are all connected to one another]. This Kat remembers his excitement at taking possession of the first edition in 1984 -- just before it was superseded by the second edition. Published in 1980, that first venture into the world of section-by-section patent law, a sort of IP practitioners' equivalent of painting by numbers, was big enough to look like a significant addition to a junior academic's bookshelf, though it now...

llinois Corporation Research LLC v. Best Buy Stores, L.P., No. 10 C 4298 Slip. Op. (N.D. Ill. Sep. 12, 2011) (Zagel, J.).  Judge Zagel denied plaintiff Illinois Computer Research’s (“ICR”) motion to reconsider the Court’s opinion granting summary judgment in this patent case for the following reasons: ·       ICR’s argument that defendant Best Buy’s agreement was based upon an improper definition of “affiliate” was improper for reconsideration because it was a new argument;  ·       ICR’s argument that Singapore law controlled was also new and, therefore, improper.

Apple fordert eine erneute Entscheidung im Streit um Markenrechte am iPad mit dem Monitor-Hersteller Proview. Am 5. Januar reichte der Konzern einen Berufungsantrag an ein höheres Gericht in der Provinz Guangdong ein. Quelle: telekom-presse.at Zum Hintergrund des Markenstreits.

Im Streit um die Rechte am Kennzeichen “iPad” in China droht Apple offenbar weiteres Ungemach. Inzwischen wird aus China von ersten Beschlagnahmungen des iPads berichtet. Laut Tagesschau.de könnte sogar ein Im- und Exportverbot ergehen. Wegen der Fertigung des iPads in China hätte ein solches Verbot sicherlich erhebliche Auswirkungen auf die Verfügbarbeit von iPads.

It's not just OHIM: pirates observe things too ... Not-so-hot news, since it broke yesterday while this blog's readers were too busy sending each other roses, coochi-cooing one another and generally being so far in flagrante valentino as to be incapable of reading the news at all, is the revelation that the European Parliament has approved the proposal to transfer the European Observatory on Counterfeiting and Piracy to the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market (OHIM) and to change its name to the European Observatory on Infringements of Intellectual Property Rights. According to the OHIM website, "The transfer, which was voted for by a large majority of MEPs [oh, for goodness' sake -- this was hardly a contentious issue on which Europe's fissiparous parliamentarians were likely to be divided, was it?], has to be formally adopted by the Council of the European Union under the ordinary legislative procedure before being finalised. After the Council vote, which is expected to...

Einige Fundstücke aus dem aktuellen Titelschutzanzeiger Nr. 1060 vom 14.02.2012: Das Ende der Odyssee im Mundraum Hai-Alarm am Müggelsee Die Starmaker Macht euch auf was gefasst! Quelle: Titelschutzanzeiger

By Kevin E. Noonan -- Last Thursday, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued draft guidances pursuant to its authority under the Biologics Price Competition and Innovation Act of 2009 (see "FDA Publishes Draft Guidelines for Biosimilar Product Development"). The draft guidances are intended by the agency to implement the follow-on biologic drug pathway mandated by the statute, and are set forth in three separate guidances directed to: 1) Scientific Considerations in Demonstrating Biosimilarity to a Reference Product 2) Quality Considerations in Demonstrating Biosimilarity to a Reference Protein Product 3) Biosimilars: Questions and Answers Regarding Implementation of the Biologics Price...

If you have to participate in Valentine’s Day, at least make it legal when you hand the card to your significant other (hereinafter referred to as “My One True Love”). Docracy, a website of online legal documents, has posted the “Be My Valentine – Lawyer Edition.” The Valentine form allows you to fill in a number [...] No related posts.

Two cases where the Board found no statutory subject matter: Ex Parte Hu, App. No. 2010-000151 (BPAI 2012). The examiner rejected claims under Section 101. On appeal, the BPAI held that the claimed "computer-readable storage medium" is "directed to a...

The UK Intellectual Property Office (UK IPO) characterizes it as misleading, warning "don't be misled." The European Patent Office (EPO) calls it deceitful, characterizing it as "subterfuge," and further pointing out that "their services have no legal effect whatsoever." The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) says that they are "unrelated to the processing of international applications." Yet many continue to believe that the nefarious and seemingly ubiquitous solicitations sent to patent applicants and owners are official invoices that must be paid in order to continue to move forward with an international patent application or foreign patent application.

Heute mal ein historisches Fundstück – eine Beanstandung des Deutschen Patentamtes vom 13.05.1950 zur Markenanmeldung vom 05.12.1949 – veröffentlicht vom Markenserviceblog. Neben den heute gradezu niedlich anmutenden Anmeldegebühren in Höhe von 15.- DM, gefällt mir folgende Formulierung. Da die Anmeldung erst in Behandlung genommen werden kann, wenn die Gebühr eingegangen ist… Allerdings muss man auch [...]

Pharmaceutical patents are always controversial: see this Kat's post here on the heated arguments for and against the extension of the duration of pharmaceutical patents. Such debates raise the additional question: what can you do, if anything, when your valuable pharmaceutical patent is nearing that all important expiration date? The recent conduct of global pharmaceutical giant Pfizer in Italy provides an example of what not to do in these circumstances as its conduct was severely criticised by the Autorità Garante della Concorrenza e del Mercato (the Italian Competition Authority, ICA). Pfizer held the patent for Xalatan (EP0364417), a product used to treat glaucoma and whose active ingredient is latanoprost. Unfortunately for Pfizer, the patent protection for Xalatan in Italy was set to expire in September 2009. However, to protect its market position, Pfizer engaged in a complex strategy to delay the entry of generic specialty drugs based on latanoprost. First, Pfizer prolonged...

Even on St Valentine's Day, competitive instincts can lead to strife ... Doctor Nic is in danger of becoming very popular with the IPKat's readers right now. She receives more admiring emails even than Merpel and her exposition of economics for the IP fraternity has done a vast amount to raise this weblog's didactic-can-be-fun credentials. Anyway, this week's Katonomics post from Dr Nicola Searle deals with a topic which is a good less popular with our readers than she is: the devil incarnate, in legal terms -- the economics of competition. This is what she has to say about it: "Closely related to economics of IP is economics of competition. Both areas span the fields of law & economics and industrial organisation. Likewise, both areas represent areas of significant regulation of the economy. In the UK, you can find economists analysing competition in academia, consulting firms and government bodies. For this post, we’ll take a look at the reasoning behind competition law. To start,...

Die Preisträger des Plagiarius 2012: Die Jury traf sich am 14. Januar 2012 und vergab drei Preise und sieben gleichrangige Auszeichnungen aus insgesamt 26 Einsendungen: Bildrechte: Aktion Plagiarius e.V. Alle Fotos zeigen jeweils links (bzw. oben) das Original und rechts (bzw. unten) das Plagiat Leichtbau-Schmiedefelge “AC Schnitzer Typ V” Original: AC Schnitzer automobile Technik, Aachen [...]

Guest Post by Scott McKeown, Greg Gardella, and Lisa M. Mandrusiak all of OBLON, SPIVAK, MCCLELLAND, MAIER & NEUSTADT, L.L.P.[1] The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit is currently considering en banc the panel decision in Marine Polymer Technologies,...