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Showing posts from October, 2005

Community Trade Marks: MOBILIX - not even OBILIX could shift this one.

In Case T-336/03, Les Éditions Albert René v OHIM [2005] EUECJ T-336/03 (27 Oct 2005) the Court of First Instance had before it an application for annulment from a disappointed opponent, for a change. The opponent had failed before the Oppositions Division but actually managed to persuade the Board of Appeal to reject the registration in respect of some specified goods. Background The mark in question was the word MOBILIX. Orange A/S ought to register that mark in classes 9, 16, 35, 37, 38 and 42 for a large variety of goods and services ranging from telecommunications apparatus and calling cards to answering services and installation services. The opponents, publishers of the well-known "Asterix" books, opposed the application on the grounds of earlier mark under art 8 (1) (b) of the CTM Regulation and earlier mark with a reputation in the Community under art 8 (5). The registration on which they relied was OBILIX which they had registered for a variety of goods in classes ...

Community Trade Marks - Smells: Strawberry Fields Forever? Not Quite

In Case T-305/04 Eden v OHMI [2005] EUECJ T-305/04 (27 Oct 2005), the Court of First Instance dismissed Eden SARL’s claim for nullification of the First Board of Appeal’s decision in « odeur de fraise mûre ». Eden had tried to register a strawberry smell for a wide range of goods in classes 3, 16, 18 and 25. The examiner threw out the application on the grounds that (1) the mark was not capable of being represented graphically within the meaning of art 4 of the CTM Regulation and was therefore covered by the ground for refusal provided for in art 7(1)(a) of the Regulation and (2) that it was devoid of any distinctive character within the meaning of art 7(1)(b) in respect of some of at least the goods claimed. The Board upheld the examiner on the first of those grounds. Relying on the European Court’s judgment in C-273/00 Sieckmann v OHIM ECR 1-11737 where it held that “a trade mark may consist of a sign which is not in itself capable of being perceived visually, provided that it ca...

Patents: Micro-organisms

Budapest Treaty: Designation of International Depository Authority The WIPO announced today that the Banco Nacional de Algas (BNA ), is designated as an international depositary authority within the meaning of article 6 (2) of the Budapest Treaty on the International Recognition of the Deposit of Micro-organisms for the Purposes of Patent Procedure. Perhaps more interesting is the blurb on the home page which indicates the BNA’s role in the Spanish Global Biodiversity Information Facility, That is described as “the biodiversity equivalent of the Human Genome Project”. Its  objective is to establish an interoperable network of biodiversity databases, aiming to be a basic tool for the scientific development of any country for better protection and use of global biodiversity

Community Trade Marks: Peek & Cloppenburg v OHMI

This is a case that in Holmfirth we call a "mullock". An application to register the sign CLOPPENBURG as a word mark for "retail trade services" in class 35 was rejected. The applicant appealed to the Board of Appeal but its appeal was rejected. The disappointed applicant then brought annulment proceedings against OHIM in the Cour of First Instance. "Nothing unusual in that", one might think. Except that OHIM supported the application . Now the Board of Appeal's decision is a little hard to follow. Cloppenburg is the name of a town in Lower Saxony of about 28,000 inhabitants and a local government district or Landkreis of some 150,000 souls. That makes it about the size of Ilkley and its website suggests that it is quite similar. Its attractions include a city park and folk museum. According to the CFI, the Board took the view that the word designated the town and Landkreis, that towns and districts of the size of Cloppenburg were regularly refe...

Community Trade Marks and Designs: Fresh up from Alicante

Some interesting stuff in today's Alicante News from OHIM: Madrid In the first year of the EC's accession to the Madrid Protocol, it has been designated in more than 6,500 applications received by WIPO in Geneva. On the basis of the designations received at OHIM, the top 10 offices of origin are: USA 658 Germany 637 Switzerland 589 Benelux 370 France 314 followed by Australia, UK, Italy, Japan and Austria in that order. In that same period, OHIM received more than 1,800 international applications from CTM owners in Germany, the UK, Spain, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, Austria, Finland and Ireland. Designs There is also quite a good article on Community designs, " What is your design protected against?"

Privacy and eCommerce: Spam Butties

I am again indebted to vnunet.com for this item. According to Ken Young's article " UK firms flouting spam regulations ", over a third of UK firms are flouting regulations on email privacy. The regulations concerned are The Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003 which implement Directive 2002/58/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 12 July 2002 concerning the processing of personal data and the protection of privacy in the electronic communications sector (Directive on privacy and electronic communications) ("the Telecomms Data Protection Directive"). The article complains that the Information Commissioner has never chased the spammers and the reason given for that reported by Ken Young is that many of the offenders appear to  be based overseas. It is perhaps worth mentioning that there is a right of action under reg. 30 (1): "A person who suffers damage by reason of any contravention of any of the requireme...

Domain Names: ICANN and Verisign, Draft Settlement Agreement

Fascinating insight into the way Americans conduct civil litigation is available from the draft settlement agreement between ICANN and Verisign over the running .com registry. I must admit that I had not been following this dispute very closely so cannot comment on it. What I do find interesting is that a settlement agreement is exposed to public and purports to be subject to public approval. However, that is probably because ICANN is a strange hybrid of a private company attentive to the general public but nevertheless accountable in the last resort to the US Department of Commerce. The main terms of the proposed settlement are that: (1) Verisign shall announce its support for ICANN as the appropriate technical coordination body for the domain name system, in particular with respect to Internet domain names, IP address numbers, root server system management functions, and protocol parameter and port numbers. (2) Verisign will not participate in, contribute moneys for, encourage or pr...

Another Pat on the Back for Microsoft

I have become uncharacteristically chummy towards Microsoft lately with kind words about Jerry Fishenden's speech on ID cards (" Microsoft's Jerry Fishenden condemns ID Card Plans " 21 Oct 2005). I am going to be nice to them again following a repor t on today's BBC website that "Microsoft has joined a Yahoo-backed effort to digitize the world's books and other works to make them searchable and accessible to anyone online." Apparently, they are going to start with works already in the public domain to avoid the legal challenge to a similar effort by Google. If Microsoft does what it says it will do, I may even consider upgrading my operating system and Office applications when the new versions come out.

Patents: WIPO publishes FAQ on PCT

For anyone who is not already a patent agent with a lot of experience of the PCT , a short paper on the WIPO website entitled " Protecting your Inventions Abroad " is invaluable. It starts off with the really basic stuff such as "I have an invention. How can I protect it in several countries?" and "What is the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT)?" to more substantial information on filing costs, priority, searches and sources of information. This is so good that I am putting a link to this article from our public access blog nipc Inven tion.

Parallel Imports: Class International BV v SmithKline Beecham Plc. and others

This was a reference to the ECJ under art 234 EEC from the Hague regional court of appeal. The proceedings arose in an appeal by the importer of a consignment of "Aquafresh" toothpaste from South Africa from the refusal of the lower court to award damages for the impounding of those goods by the Dutch customs authorities in March and April 2002 upon the request of SmithKline, the proprietor of the "Aquafresh" trade mark. The appeal court referred several questions to the ECJ which the Court re-formulated as follows: (1) Can a trade mark proprietor may prevent the introduction into the EC, under the external transit procedure or the customs warehousing procedure, of original goods bearing his registered mark? (2) Can the trade mark proprietor may prohibit the offering for sale or the sale of original products placed under the external transit procedure or the customs warehousing procedure? and (3) Where does the onus of proof lie? The ECJ answered those questions a...

Copyright: Nepal to join Berne

The WIPO has announced today that Nepal will accede to the Berne Convention with effect from 11 Jan 2006. The last two states to join were Uzbekistan on 19 April 2005 and the Comoros on 17 April 2005. The USA only joined on 1 March 1989. See Treaties Database Contracting Parties on the WIPO website for current members.

Montana's Security Breach Notification Law: Half Way to Data Protection

My US colleague Toni Tease , who practises in Montana, has an interesting article in the latest issue of her newsletter on a recently enacted statute in her state that appears to go a long way towards data protection. Indeed it may be cheaper and a lot more workable than our approach in Europe because there is no need for a bureaucracy or the regulatory burden of registration or notification. If I understand the statute correctly, it requires what we would call data controllers to notify promptly data subjects within the state of any unauthorized access to their personal data. There is also a duty to delete personal data when no longer needed. The legislation is due to come into effect on 1 March 2006 and Montana is one of several states in the West with such legislation. One of the reasons why we have the " Safe Harbor " arrangements with all the complex contractual provisions that those arrangements involve is that the US has not provided much statutory protection for pers...

Yorkshire Pudding: Paxman v Hughes

An all Leeds affair between Yorkshire's finest. Lupton Fawcett on one side and Walker Morris on the other (though their respective barristers came from London). And all for a fight over s.37 of the Patents Act 1977 . S.37 (1) provides machinery for determining who is entitled to a patent after it has been granted. It is generally regarded as the equivalent to s.8 which provides machinery for determining who is entitled to a patent application. However, one difference between s.37 and s.8 is that s.37 allows the question of whether any right in or under a patent should be transferred or granted to a third party to be determined by the comptroller. This case is about an attempt by one co-owner of a patent to use s.37 (1) to circumvent the rule in s.36 (3) that where two or more persons own a patent all of them must consent to a licence under the patent. The application had been brought because the joint owners of a patent had fallen out. The invention had not been a success. One of t...

Patents: Mayne Pharma (USA) Inc v Teva UK Ltd

The trial judge described this case as " very short to try and very hard to decide". The issues were whether the patent was valid and if so whether it had been infringed. Mr Justice Pumfrey concluded that the patent would have been infringed had it been invalid but in the event it was bad for obviousness. There was no new law in this case but a good illustration of how the court works with expert evidence.

Internet Governance: One American View to the Contrary

On Friday I reported a speech by Commissioner Reding entitled " Opportunities and challenges of the Ubiquitous World and some words on Internet Governance" on the EC perspective on reform of the domain name system. The Commissioner made the not unreasonable point that it is undesirable for the government of one state to determine who can run the top level domain space of other states or, indeed, the generic top level domain. Mark A. Shiffrin, a lawyer and a former Connecticut state consumer protection commissioner, and Avi Silberschatz, a professor of computer science at Yale, express the contrary view in "Web of the Free", one of today's Op-Ed contributions to the New York Times . Those authors attack the Commissioner's position as "disingenuous" describing it as a "'maneuver' [presumably, manoeuvre] amount[ing] to a call for the United States to depend on the kindness of strangers in maintaining basic infrastructure that underpins ...

Also from the Commonwealth - a Canadian Blog

I have just come across a good Canadian IP blog by Sander Gelsing called " Now, why didn't I think of that? " According to his bio, Sander practises with Sisson Warren Sinclair in Red Deer, Alberta as a barrister and solicitor, patent and trade mark agent. Skimming through his blog the following took my fancy: Canadian and U.S. Patent Law Differences on 11 Oct 2005 (a good cross-reference - to my untrained English eyes Canadian patent law looks even more different than American law); Wyrd Trade-mark Lawsuit on 4 Oct 2005 about a claim by a Winnipeg folk group against Warner Brothers, Radiohead and Pulp for C$40 million and an order to prevent the latest Harry Potter movie from being shown in Canada (the comments are interesting too); and Patents curb Competition on 27 Sep 2005 about Eli Lilly & Co. and Apotex Inc on the interrelation between IP and competition. There is of course much, much more. I commend this site unhesitatingly.

New Australian IP News Service

I am indebted yet again to Stephen Nipper for drawing my attention to a new IP news site by the Australian Patent Information Centre in his post " New IP Kid on the Blawgk: Australian Patent Information Centre blog" on The Invent Blog . I have heard of "blogs" and even "blawgs" not I am not sure what a "Blawgk" is. The context suggests a space on the Internet for lawyers who write blogs about the law. Returning to the Australian site, the blurb says that it is brought by IP Organisers and IP Menu and that it will provide details of the latest Patent Office, Federal Court and High Court cases and IP news from Australia. "If it is Australian and has anything to do with patents, [we] will find it here." Its RSS feed is http://www.patentaustralia.com/atom.xml . IP Organisers offer intellectual property support to patent agents, lawyers and others including research, investigation, management, commercialization, auditing and discovery. IP ...

Privacy: Microsoft's Jerry Fishenden condemns ID Card Plans

Microsoft has risen considerably in my esteem since I read in vnunet.com that its national technology officer Jerry Fishenden has criticized HMG's plans to introduce identity cards (see " Microsoft slams UK ID card database, Central database could lead to 'massive identity fraud "). According to the article Mr Fishenden described the government's current plans for a centralized database with lots of information on everyone as a mistake. He added that it could lead to massive identity fraud. Rather than centralizing, data should be dispersed. In Fishenden's words: "Any ID system needs only to keep information that is appropriate to a particular search in one location. That way you reduce the impact of loss or theft by decentralising the data." The article claims that the ICT experts the Home Office have been consulting have not really been speaking their minds and that his views are echoed by the BCS. I'll think twice before switching to Linux fo...

Moral Rights for Performers: Draft Regs on Patent Office Website

Rights in performances are pretty new in themselves in the UK. Although the Dramatic and Musical Performers Protection Act 1958 and previous legislation had made it an offence to record a performance without the performer's consent it was not until Ex p. Island Records Ltd . [1978] Ch 122 that performers were able to apply for injunctions to restrain such recording. Elevation of the right to consent or withhold consent to a performance to the status of an intellectual property right akin to copyright only came about on 1 Aug 1989 when Part II of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 came into force. At first, those rights were quite limited as can be seen by comparing the original version Part II of the Act with what we have now . Most of the changes came about through with The Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 1996 and The Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003 which implemented various EC directives. Now Part II is to change yet again with the the provision o...

Viviane Reding: Internet Governance - the European Perspective

An issue that has attracted a disproportionate amount of attention is an alleged spat between Europe and the US the World Summit on the Information Society as to who should run the internet domain name system. In a speech delivered to the 2005 Summit of the Global Business Dialogue on electronic commerce on 17 Oct 2005 Viviane Reding, the Commissioner for the Information Society and the Media put the record straight. Emphasizing the impressive degree of consensus that already exists on most issues, she explained that the difference of opinion that is grabbing the headlines is the small but important question of who and how names and addresses are allocated on the internet. Traditionally, the US government has overseen these key functions and most agree that it has done a good job. However, it is no longer desirable for a single state to decide who should run every other country’s top level domain space rather than the governments of the countries. Nor is it desirable for a single sta...

Access to Justice: Campbell's Briefs get their Dosh

The Synthon appeal was not the only case to keep the law lords busy yesterday. They also dismissed the MGN Ltd.'s appeal against having to pay a success fee of £279,981.35 on top of the costs of £377,070.07 for the trial, £114,755.40 for the appeal to the Court of Appeal and £288,468 to the House of Lords, all for damages of £3,500. The reason for the success fee was that Naomi Campbell's lawyers accepted instructions for the appeal to the House of Lords on a conditional fee agreement. MGN argued not entirely unreasonably that the threat of that kind of top up on already massive costs was something of an infringement of their human rights and particularly their freedom of expression. None of the law lords appeared to be particularly happy about the decision they had to deliver but they considered the law to be clear. Lord Hoffmann called for Parliament to look again at the legislation and most of the rest of the law lords agreed with him.

Long Anticipated: House of Lords restores Trial Judge's Judgment in Synthon

In Synthon BV v. Smithkline Beecham plc [2005] UKHL 59 (20 Oct 2005) the law lords restored Mr Justice Jacob's judgment in Synthon BV v Smithkline Beecham Plc [2002] EWHC 2573 which the Court of Appeal had overturned in Synthon B.V v Smithkline Beecham Plc [2003] EWCA Civ 861 (25 June 2003). The issue in the appeal was an interesting point on anticipation. It has been feature of our (and no doubt every other country's patent law) since the Statute of Monopolies that a patent monopoly should be granted only for an invention that is new. S. 2 (1) of the Patents Act 1977 provides that an invention shall be taken to be new only if it does not form part of the state of the art. Now the interesting point of this case is that the "state of the art" can be either "all matter (whether a product, a process, information about either, or anything else) which has at any time before the priority date of that invention been made available to the public (whether in the United...

Rethinking Innovation

One of the titles that attracted my attention in Geneva earlier in the week was Sisule F Musungu's "Rethinking innovation, development and intellectual property in the UN: WIPO and beyond" . I have just finished reading it and very interesting it is too. Musungu argues for a radical overhaul of the international institutions governing innovation, development, and intellectual property in order to achieve the Millennium Development Goals. Not the least controversial of his suggestions is the relegation of the WIPO from the lead UN agency for intellectual property to something more like its original role as the international bureau managing the implementation of the IP regime (that it so say the conventions) but leaving decisions on the shape and structure of the regime to other agencies. He also calls for better coordination and coherence within and among developing countries. He argues that they are "currently the only ones investing in protection of the public in...

Animal Crackers: Not the Marx Brothers this Time

The Court of Appeal has today resolved that the Registered Designs Regulations 2001 which implemented the Designs Directive (Directive 98/71/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 13 Oct 1998 on the legal protection of designs OJ L 289 , 28/10/1998 pages 28 - 35) were validly made. We can relax. The Registered Designs Act 1949 in its third major reincarnation since its enactment is good law. In Oakley Inc v Animal Ltd and others [2005] EWCA Civ 1191 (20 Oct 2005) the Court of Appeal resolved one of the loose ends dangling from Peter Prescott QC's judgment at first instance earlier in the year ( Oakley Inc v Animal Ltd and others [2005] EWHC 210 (Ch) (17 Feb 2005)). The other will have to await the outcome of a preliminary reference to the ECJ under art 234 of the Treaty of Rome. The issue that was decided today was that s.2 (2) of the European Communities Act 1972 does entitle a minister to exercise an option in a directive to retain existing legislation without p...

Apologies for Interruptions to Email Updates: Normal Service Resumed

I have just found out that the email updates have been down for the last few days. I am not quite sure why not. The message on my "Bloglet" control panel page was that it tried to send a subscription for my site, but there was an error. It asked me to verify that my site settings were correct. I have tested the connection and it now appears to be working properly. I surmise that the server must have been down for maintenance when the subscriptions were issued. I regret that 14 posts appear to have been lost since 13 Oct 2005 when the service went down: Porridge for Patent Infringement? No.2. on the FIPR's evidence to the Patent Office on the proposal for a second enforcement directive; Needled in Geneva on domain name disputes; Tokyo Project Mr Justice Kitchin's judgment in GMG Holdings v Tokyo Project an interesting passing off case where the claimant was relying on the style of decoration of its premises; Tender Loving Care Case note on Love & Care v Kiernan ...

Porridge for Patent Infringement? No. 2

In my first post to this blog I criticized proposals for a Council directive on criminal measures aimed at ensuring the enforcement of intellectual property rights and a framework decision to strengthen the criminal law framework to combat intellectual property offences. I am glad to see that I was in good company. In " The Second IPR Enforcement Directive — A Threat to Competition and to Liberty ", the response to the consultation of the Foundation for Information Policy Research , Professor Ross Anderson of Cambridge University Computer Laboratory attacked the proposals on the following grounds: (1) criminalization of patent infringement will damage competition, resulting in higher prices for consumers; (2) n ew business formation and economic growth in Europe will be hit, especially if patent infringement remains a civil matter in our competitors; (3) it will interfere with free speech over the internet; (4) it will weaken still further the UK software indust...

Needled in Geneva

I arrived at 03:30 this morning after a 4-hour drive from Luton and a very full day in Geneva where I attended the WIPO Domain Name Panellists Meeting and visited the Quaker United Nations Office ("QUNO") for lunch. It was a fantastic experience. I learned a lot from those meetings. Enough to blog away for days. As I am still quite exhausted from the journey, I'll mention just one amusing incident though it wasn't fun for me at the time. A very nice man called Lawrence Nodine (a partner of Needle &; Rosenberg PC - you see the very bad pun - of Atlanta, Georgia recently acclaimed as the top law firm for IP in the USA) was delivering a very erudite paper entitled "Trends in Domain Name Registration using Whois Details". Though it was scholarly it was almost the last paper of a very long day and I am afraid I allowed my attention to drift as I wanted to look up the actual text of the Policy for a question that I had intended to ask. Suddenly through my r...

Tokyo Project: Another Kitchin Judgment

My heart sank when I saw GMG Radio Holdings Ltd and others v Tokyo Project Ltd another [2005] EWHC 2188 (Ch) (14 Oct 2005) immediately after I had posted my note on Love & Care in case I had been too gushing but I don't think I was. This is also an exercise of discretion - in this case whether or not to grant an interim injunction in a claim for passing off. The judgment seems to suggest that the indicia upon which the claim was based was the general look of a night club which had been designed by an artist who had left the claimant to join the defendant company. Perhaps not surprisingly, he had designed the defendant's club in similar style. The application to restrain the defendants had come on just before they were to start work on preparations for their launch. Any delay in those preparations was likely to put them to considerable inconvenience and expense. The judge refused the application partly because he could see considerable difficulty in running the claim to...

Tender Loving Care?

Although not an intellectual property case, we have had an early opportunity to glimpse something of the mettle of the newly appointed assigned judge, and very promising it is too. In Love & Care Ltd v Kiernan and others [2005] EWHC 2180 (Ch) (13 Oct 2005) his lordship has a security for costs application under s.726 (1) of the Companies Act 1985. The dispute arose from proceedings in the Land Registry. Each party claimed to have agreed a lease with the former owner of a property just before he died. One of those parties protected his claim with a caution while the other applied to register its lease. The Chief Land Registrar felt unable to resolve this dispute and directed the party that had registered the caution to issue proceedings in the High Court or lose his caution in default. He failed to do so within the allotted time and the caution was vacated. The party against which the caution had been registered brought proceedings joining not only the party that had registered the...

Lipitor Again

Just before I get onto the motorway I should mention an article by Alex Benerson in today's New York Times entitled " Lipitor or Generic? Billion-Dollar Battle Looms" which provides more background information for the Ranbaxy case. The key point of the article is that "spending on prescription drugs has jumped from US$40 billion in 1990 to almost US$250 billion this year, and continues to rise faster than overall inflation." Interestingly, the article also reports resistance by doctors and patients to migrating from to a generic even after a patent expires. It is necessary to register to access NYT articles. Registration is free. It's as well to move quickly, however, because the NYT charges for archived material.

This and That

This has to be a very quick post as I am off to Luton tonight in time to catch the 07:00 flight to Geneva tonight. Can you believe that the return fare only costs £76.98 including airport taxes? It usually costs more than that to get to London in time for the 10:30 applications court - by standard class rail. The reason I shall be in Geneva is to attend the annual WIPO domain name panellists meeting. The programme is very promising - talks by Christian Wichard and Ignacio de Castro on developments in ADR for IP, updates on the UDRP, a discussion of the new .eu TLD including a presentation by Tony Willoughby and much more. While there I shall also pop into the Quaker United Nations Office . I mention this because they have published some work on intellectual property . One of the topics upon that they have discussed is Frederick Abbott's paper on Compulsory Licensing for Public Health Needs . This topic used to be regarded as a development issue but I think the rest of the world wil...

The Hunchback of Notre-Dame

An interesting case that has somehow slipped under the radar is Mrs. Justice Crennan's decision in Christodoulou v Disney Enterprises Inc [2005] FCA 1401 (4 Oct 2005) . A Melbourne based writer and composer, who was also in the business of providing entertainment bookings, registered the sign THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME simpliciter in class 41 for ‘Entertainment services in class 41’. He sued the Disney Corporation for trade mark infringement. There was no dispute that those words had appeared as a title in Disney films, books, videos, DVDs and website. The question before the court was whether such use amounted to use in the trade mark sense. The judge held that it did not. The words "Hunchback of Notre Dame" referred to an established title. The descriptive meaning of those words had been established long before the registration of the trade mark. The purpose and nature of the use was to describe Disney products. It was not for the purpose of indicating a relevant co...

Switzerland: Anti-Counterfeiting and Piracy Initiative

The Swiss patent office (Swiss Federal Institute of Intellectual Property) has announced an anti-piracy and counterfeiting initiative to be launched by a symposium on 9 Nov 2005. The press release indicates that this is a joint venture between the Swiss Chamber of Commerce and the Institute. Similar initiatives have of course been started in the UK , USA and internationally .

Patents: Leo Sternbach

Today's Economist carries an obituary of Leo Sternbach, the inventor of "Valium" who died on 28 Sep 2005 at the age of 97. The article records how the drug companies competed to make a tranquilliser without any of the side effects of existing products in the 1950s. Wallace Pharmaceuticals led the way with a tranquiliser that was an improvement on what had been available before. Sternbach was asked to develop something with just enough differences to avoid infringing Wallace's patent. Instead of analysing Wallace's invention, Sternbach took a different approach. Starting with research that he had carried out as a student, Sternbach tested 40 benzodiapene compounds until he came across a preparation that worked. T he new drug was called "Librium" and put on sale in 1960. It was followed by a simpler but stronger version that Sternbach also developed called "Valium". It was remarkably popular during the 1970s but concern grew as to whether i...

Case Law Update - Brussels Convention: Scania Finance France SA

The European Court decided a short but quite important point on service earlier today. The question was whether a claim form or other originating process shall be considered as having been properly served if service complies with the practice of the court effecting service or whether it must comply with the Brussels Convention. The Court decided that "where a relevant international convention is applicable between the State in which the judgment is given and the State in which recognition is sought, the question whether the document instituting the proceedings was duly served must be determined in the light of the provisions of that convention."

IP Counsel Blog: Letter From Father To Son: How To Succeed As A Lawyer

I have mentioned Tod Mayover's excellent blog more than once before (see Choosing Trade Marks and other American Wisdom, Computer Contracts Updates and Contract Drafting: it comes to something when an American tells us how to use our Language) . Now he has come up with another pithy and though provoking post, " Letter From Father To Son: How To Succeed As A Lawyer". I have had too many pupils over the last 12 years or so to take another, but if I did another pupil I think I would give the advice that appears on Tod's blog. Tod says: "I recognize that some of this advice might seem out of place in today’s world because society is much more competitive and financially driven than it was forty years ago. But wouldn’t it be nice to expect these same virtues from our fellow men today as our fathers did many years before!" I am not sure that I agree with him on that one. I think the pressures of today make the advice more apposite than ever.

Competition Law: OFT rules in MasterCard Interchange Fee

The OFT has published its decision on MasterCard's interchange fee. Essentially, it has found that there was an infringement of art 81 (1) of the Treaty of Rome and the Chapter 1 prohibition under s.2 of the Competition Act 1998. For those who are interested, an "interchange fee" is an interbank payment made between the issuer and the acquirer, and typically is paid by the acquirer to the issuer. An agreement between MasterCard and its member banks set the level of a fallback multilateral interchange fee which applied to all transactions made using UK issued MasterCard cards between 1 March 2000 and 18 November 2004. The OFT was satisfied that that practice has been discontinued. According to the OFT, the agreement infringed art 81 (1) EEC and the Competition Act 1998 in that it gave rise to a collective agreement on the level of the multilateral interchange fee and resulted in the unjustified recovery of certain costs incurred by MasterCard's UK members and other ...

Ranbaxy Case: A US Perspective

I should just mention that an interesting US comment on Ranbaxy UK Ltd and another v Warner-Lambert Company [2005] EWHC 2142 (Patents) (12 Oct 2005) appeared on Patent Baristas overnight. Stephen Albainy-Jenei reported the decision in "Pfizer wins one/Loses one in UK Suit over Lipitor" and added some useful information about the parallel litigation in the USA. In particular the note summarizes the prior art which makes it much easier to absorb the revocation part of Mr Justice Pumfrey's decision. Anyone who wants to analyse the English case would benefit from reading Stephen's note. It is also clear that the same issues arise in the American proceedings as in the revocation part of the Ranbaxy case and in Stephen's view the decision in the US District Court is likely to go the same way. On verra .

IP Case Law Update - Patents: Ranbaxy UK Ltd and another v Warner-Lambert Co. [2005] EWHC 2142 (Patents) (12 Oct 2005)

1. Introduction There are at least three reasons for reading this case. The first is that Mr Justice Pumfrey refused to consider evidence relating to representations made to patent offices on the ground that it was irrelevant to construction. His decision stymies, at least for the time being, the development of anything like prosecution or file wrapper estoppel in England. Secondly, it applies the principles set out by the House of Lords in Kirin-Amgen Inc and others v Hoechst Marion Roussel Ltd and others [2004] UKHL 46 (21 October 2004) and subsequent cases. Finally, he considered whether there are any practical differences between the European Patent Office and the English courts in considering obviousness. 2. What this case was about This was an application for a declaration of non-infringement in respect of one European patent under s.71 of the Patents Act 1977 and a claim for revocation of another. The inventions for which the patents were granted were for atorvastatin, a chole...

NYSBA International Law and Practice Section: Fall Meeting in London

Yesterday, Jonathan Armstrong of the Leeds branch of Eversheds LLP sent me the programme for the Fall Meeting of the International Law and Practice Section of the New York State Bar Association which will take place in London between 18 and 23 Oct 2005. Jonathan is on the steering committee of that meeting and he and his colleagues have to be congratulated on a very interesting programme. On the IP side there will be presentations by Stephen Probert of the Patent Office and Tim Frain of Nokia on cross-border protection for IP between 10:00 and 11:15 on 20 Oct. Jonathan himself will be co-chairing the data protection session between 13:20 and 14:35 on 21 Oct. Speakers include the Dutch Information Commissioner and Sue Gold of The Walt Disney Co . The title of the session is "Data Protection and Global Uncertainty: Examining the Legal and Political Basis for Collaboration". No doubt much of this will be on "Safe Harbor". It will be interesting to see how that accomm...

Yet more on Utility Models: New Japanese Utility Models Law

According to the latest EPIDOS News published today on the EPO website Japan adopted a new utility models law in April of this year. According to the report, the new law extends the term from 6 to 10 years, reduces the renewal fee for the first to third and fourth to sixth years but introduces a new fee for each year of the extended term and permits applications for utility models to be converted into patent applications. I was unable to find anything in English about the new law on the Japan Patent Office website but it may be that I was not looking in the right place. EPIDOS announces that the new law will be discussed at the " Far East meets West " conference in Vienna on 24 and 25 Nov 2005. My other post on utility models is " More on Utility Mode ls" on 5 Oct 2005.

Designs: Abolition of Registered Designs Appeal Tribunal

Tucked away in the minutes of meeting of 5 Sept 2005 of the RPWG (Registration Practice Working Group) on Designs published today is a reference to a proposal to abolish the Registered Designs Appeal Tribunal. The Tribunal was set up at the same time as the Patents Appeal Tribunal and was run on similar lines. Its jurisdiction actually increased after 1 Aug 1989 to hear appeals from the comptroller under s.249 of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988. The proposal to abolish the Tribunal apparently results from a review by Lord Justice Carnwath which is published on the ITMA website. The plan is for appeal to lie to the Patents County Court (that is to say, the Central London County Court). David Musker is reported to have expressed concern at the costs and I would agree with him. The appointed person has worked pretty well for trade marks and it would seem sensible to extend his jurisdiction to designs and indeed to patents.