MORE OF THE SAME ...

1 Wake up and smell the trade mark opposition

This from page 9 of the paper version of The Lawyer magazine for 8 August: London solicitors Edwin Coe are acting pro bono for the Ethiopian government in its attempt to prevent coffee giant Starbucks registering the words "Ethiopian coffee" as a trade mark.

The IPKat wonders if there's something missing from this tale. Coffee is grown in Ethiopia and has been almost since the dawn of humanity. If "Ethiopian coffee" is used for coffee from Ethiopia, it's unregistrable as a trade mark because it's totally descriptive; if it's used for coffee from anywhere else, it's unregistrable because it's deceptive. Unless ... Starbucks are cunningly seeking to register "Ethiopian coffee" for something quite unrelated to coffee, such as rubber gloves or dry cleaning services.

More on Ethiopian coffee here
Ethiopian coffee ceremony here
The original Starbuck here
The history of Starbucks here
Starbucks gossip here


2 Patinnova 2005

The European Patent Office has just announced details of this year's Patinnova 2005 conference, to be held from 8 to 10 November in Budapest.

Having spoken at the previous Patinnova (2003, Luxembourg) on IP litigation strategy in Europe, IPKat co-blogmeister Jeremy can recommend this event because the participants and those who attend are drawn from a wide cross-section of the innovation community: you actually get a chance to discover how the strengths and weaknesses of the patent system are viewed by people and small/medium-sized businesses as well as by the big battalions.


3 Volunteers needed
Readers of this blog will know that Oxford University Press is shortly to launch a new monthly periodical, the Journal of Intellectual Property Law and Practice, which Jeremy is editing. Articles in JIPLP are refereed, to ensure at least a modicum of objective quality control. This is where help is needed. Jeremy keeps asking the same few people to do the refereeing, but he really needs to widen the group of people to whom he can turn for comments as to the quality or publishability of articles submitted.

If you would like to be considered for the task of reading the occasional draft article and commenting on it, please email Jeremy here and let him know the area(s) of IP in which you profess expertise.