No rabbits, promises McCreevy

The IPKat's friend Stephanie Bodoni tells him that European Union Internal Commissioner Charlie McCreevy has been speaking out again on unifying Europe's fragmented patent system. Speaking at a conference in Berlin yesterday, he says the "time has now come" to make it easier for companies to defend their intellectual property rights in Europe.

Right: something the Commissioner will NOT be doing next week

The European Commission is now expected to publish its proposals by 4 April at the latest. Said McCreevy:

"When I took over as commissioner, I promised to make one attempt at the Community patent. That time has now come".
Disappointing the IPKat, who loves party tricks, the Commissioner contained:

"I will not be pulling a rabbit out of a hat next week, but I will be putting forward some constructive suggestions on the way forward".
The Commission is known to favour the creation of a European patent judiciary whose decisions would be subject to rulings of the European Court of Justice.

Left: Apart from European patent unification, Commissioner McCreecy has other pet projects

The IPKat says, let's wait and see if something workable is proposed before we howl it down. Merpel says, I may be imagining things but I have this feline feeling that the ECJ doesn't really have a great deal of experience dealing with patent law. Why not appeal to a panel of London black taxi-drivers? They know the answers to everything.

Some rabbit patents: inflatable Easter Bunny; Bunny baking pan; device for teaching children to make bunny ears when learning to tie shoe-laces; kit for supplying food to the Easter bunny

4 April update: The Commission have now issued a press release, setting out their "vision for improving [the] patent system in Europe". No rabbits, unfortunately.
No rabbits, promises McCreevy No rabbits, promises McCreevy Reviewed by Jeremy on Friday, March 30, 2007 Rating: 5

No comments:

All comments must be moderated by a member of the IPKat team before they appear on the blog. Comments will not be allowed if the contravene the IPKat policy that readers' comments should not be obscene or defamatory; they should not consist of ad hominem attacks on members of the blog team or other comment-posters and they should make a constructive contribution to the discussion of the post on which they purport to comment.

It is also the IPKat policy that comments should not be made completely anonymously, and users should use a consistent name or pseudonym (which should not itself be defamatory or obscene, or that of another real person), either in the "identity" field, or at the beginning of the comment. Current practice is to, however, allow a limited number of comments that contravene this policy, provided that the comment has a high degree of relevance and the comment chain does not become too difficult to follow.

Learn more here: http://ipkitten.blogspot.com/p/want-to-complain.html

Powered by Blogger.