NIPC Law

Mungo Jerry live at Zürisee-Festival in Switzerland 2013, Erlenbach Author Harald Bischoff Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported licence. Source: Wikipedia IPEC (His Honour Judge Hacon)  Editions Musicales Alpha S.A.R.L. v Universal Music Publishing Ltd and Others [2017] EWHC 1058 (IPEC) (10 May 2017) This case, which came before His Honour Judge Hacon on 23 Feb 2017, shows how copyright comes into being, how it is assigned and how much care should be taken when drawing up agreements for its assignment, particularly when settling disputes over ownership. The story began in 1966 when Jacques Dutronc  recorded a song entitled  Et moi, et moi, et moi   which reached number 2 in the French charts. Dutronc had composed the music while Jacques Lanzmann wrote the words. Because Britain and France were and remain parties to the Berne Convention , copyright subsisted automatically in those works in the Uni...

Jane Lambert According to the BBC, the US food blogger  Elizabeth  LaBau  has brought proceedings against the publishers of The Food Network for copyright infringement (see  "US food blogger sues Food Network over snow globe cakes"   3 June 2017). Copyright infringement falls within the jurisdiction of the federal courts in the USA so I looked up recent filings in the US District Court and found that proceedings had been filed on 1 June 2017 by  William Bowen  on behalf of Ms LaBau against Television Food Network GP in the  US District Court for the Central District of California.  Ms LaBau blogs about cakes and desserts in her  SugarHero! blog . One of her confections is " Snow Globe Cupcakes with Gelatin Bubbles ". The BBC reports that Ms LaBau does not complain that copying her recipe infringed her copyright as "it is almost impossible to claim copyright over a list of ingredients" but she does object...

Jane Lambert The European IPR Helpdesk , an EU-funded collaboration between Infeurope SA , Eurice GmbH  and  L'Institut de la Propriété Intellectuelle Luxembourg  to provide free, first-line advice and information on intellectual property, has recently published two fact sheets on IP and trade fairs. The first, which is entitled  Intellectual property management at trade fairs ,  is addressed to exhibitors at, and visitors to, trade fairs while the second,  IP considerations for trade fair organisers , is addressed to organizers. Both fact sheets were developed in co-operation with the European Major Exhibition Centres Associaton  and the European Exhibition Industry Alliance, Intellectual property management at trade fairs starts with "Things you should know before participating in a trade fair." These include "Knowing the IPRs you own", "Registration is the easiest and most effective way to fight against infring...