Other Articles of Interest

CIPA's York Meeting

IP Yorkshire 10 April 2018


I was one of the speakers at CIPA's York meeting at the Principal Hotel. The others were Louise Edwards of Mazars, David Bloom of Safeguard IP and Kalim Yasseen of the IPO. Tony Rollins chaired the meeting.

I spoke about litigation after 28 March 2017 when the EU treaties will cease to apply and considered the litigation framework we are likely to find then. Louise discussed changes to patent box relief in the Finance Act 2016 and the Finance Bill. David talked about all the new products in IP insurance. Yasim covered changes to the Patents Rules and new services on the IPO's section of the .gov.uk website  More 

IP Litigation After Brexit

IP North West 9 April 2018

In 2 years time, there will be no Community design or EU trade mark courts and we may well have left the Unified Patent Court. What should we do then? Well, make more use of IPEC, especially the small claims track, for a start as we need to do something about the cost of IP litigation in this country. We need to develop new markets for our exports and perhaps rely on the protection from expropriation provisions of bilateral investment treaties if our intellectual assets are not adequately protected in our overseas markets. More


Domain Name Recovery

NIPC News 7 April 2017

Are your customers and visitors to your website sidetracked to spook sites or landing pages with sponsored links and searches by domain names that are the same as or similar to the name of your business or one of your products and services? There may be something you can do about it without costing a mint of money or taking hours of your time that could be put to better use.  More

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Copyright in Photographs: Temple Island Collections and Creation Records

Image
In our very first NIPC newsletter which we published in June 1997 I wrote a case note on Mr. Justice Lloyd's decision in  Creation Records Ltd. and Others v News Group Newspapers Ltd   [1997] EMLR 444, [1997] EWHC Ch 370, (1997) 16 Tr LR 544. In that case Mr. Noel Gallagher of Oasis and others applied for an interlocutory injunction to restrain The Sun from offering for sale and selling a poster of Oasis that featured a photo of an elaborate set that included a white Rolls Royce in a country club swimming pool. The Sun's photograph was very similar to the photograph that appeared on an Oasis album cover. The similarity arose because The Sun's photographer shot the same scene at roughly the same time and from the same angle as Mr. Gallagher's photographer but he did not reproduce any part of Oasis's print or negative. The learned judge held that the plaintiffs had no arguable case for infringement of copyright though he accepted that they had an arguable case for br...
Read more

"What is meant by "Due Cause" in s.10 (3) of the Trade Marks Act? The Red Bull Case

Image
Amsterdam   Source Wikipedia According to Wikipedia  Red Bull is the most popular energy drink in the world, with 5.2 billion cans sold in 2012. Its manufacturer, Red Bull GmbH , has registered the RED BULL mark has registered those words and their accompanying logo as word and device marks in trade mark registries around the world including the Benelux Office for Intellectual Property ( "BOIP" ) . The company registered that sign with BOIP for non-alcoholic drinks in class 32 with effect from 11 July 1983. After decades of massive sales and extensive advertising nobody could argue that that mark has a reputation within the meaning of art 5 (2) of the Trade Marks Directive (Directive 2008/95/EC of the European Parliament and the Council of 22 October 2008   to approximate the laws of the Member States relating to trade marks OJ 8.11.2008 p 299/25).  S.10 (3) of our Trade Marks Act 1994   implements that provision. There is in the Net...
Read more

Copyright: Creation Records Ltd. v News Group

It is trite law that if two photographers take identical pictures of the same scene at the same time from the same position each of their photographs is an original work and neither infringes the copyright in the other. However, much of the skill of a photographer lies in his choice of subject and the arrangement of the scene. The question whether copyright subsists independently in such an arrangement arose in Creation Records Ltd. v News Group Newspapers Ltd . (1997) The Times 27 April.   The Facts A swimming pool at a country club was drained and various props including a white Rolls Royce motor car assembled for a photograph of a well-known group of musicians for reproduction on their album cover. Although the public was not admitted to the session certain fans of the group who happened to be there were allowed to photograph the scene before official pictures were taken. A freelance photographer who was booked into the club photographed the scene during the session. One of his pict...
Read more