Monday miscellany

Anyone for Australian Champagne? The Agreement between the European Community and Australia on trade in wine, signed on 1 December 2008, comes into force on 1 September 2010. It's 221 pages long and not as exciting as some things the Kats have read, but it's no less important for all that. In short, it's a formal international deal that regulates trade in wine between Australia and the EU, replacing the 1994 Agreement and Protocol between the same parties. Australian wine producers will have to make fewer changes and concessions to sell their wine in the EU and 112 registered Australian geographical indications for wine will be recognised there. As for Aussie wines bearing EU geographical indications, wholesalers will have five years to sell their stock, and retailers can sell it for as long as it takes to get rid of their stock. The new agreement looks like this.

If you want to know how recruitment consultants view the British IP professions at a time when we're either emerging from the recession or preparing for the double-dip, take a look at Pete Fellows' Review of the UK Private Practice Intellectual Property Sector, August 2010, noted here on SOLO IP.

"Oh to be in Serbia ..." now that this fascinating country has adopted its new Trade Law. This law, passed late last month, comes into force on 1 January 2011, a holiday! Based on the principle of free trade, it seeks to prevent unfair competition, while improving protection of consumers and goods on the Serbian market. All retailers will be required to possess adequate customs documents, such as an invoice and a customs declaration, for goods they wish to import and sell, the implication being that, where no such documents exist, the goods might just be a little bit counterfeit. Retailers also have to keep records of the purchase, retail price and transportation of goods -- which of course can serve as evidence of genuine trade mark use in cancellation actions.

Right: Serbia honours the IPKat's cousin

Another innovation is the introduction of a new, improved definition of unfair competition which states that the sale of goods whose brand, shape or look and feel mislead consumers into believing that they are purchasing an original constitutes unfair competition. This and more information can be obtained from the Balkan-based IP practice of PETOŠEVIĆ, which kindly provided the IPKat with this information.

Since everyone is talking about India at the moment, the IPKat took a little time out from his busy schedule to flip the pages of an excellent little book published earlier this year. It's Bilateral Trade Agreements in the Era of Globalization: the EU and India in Search of a Partnership. While none of the authors is affiliated to an Indian institution (the team is half Welsh, half Canadian), the text of this work reveals a degree of sympathetic objectivity which speaks well for their scholarship and for their knowledge of the issues that drive bilaterals from both sides of the India/EU divide. The authors are Sangeeta Khorana and Nicholas Perdikis (both from the School of Management and Business, Aberystwyth University, Wales) and Canadians May T. Yeung (Estey Centre for Law and Economics in International Trade) and William A. Kerr (Van Vliet Professor, University of Saskatchewan). According to the publisher's online blurb,

"This unique book provides an assessment of an Indian–EU agreement, drawing on the theory of preferential agreements, the history of India–European relations and the recent refocusing of the Indian economy. The authors explore both a broad overview of the agreement as well as a detailed examination of sensitive sectors.

... After a broad discussion of the agreement, the book focuses on two sensitive sectors – clothing and footwear, including the results of a stakeholder survey regarding non-tariff barriers in these industries. The book concludes that realizing the potential benefits of an India–EU agreement will depend on a clear understanding of the existing barriers to trade, careful negotiations and the willingness to implement what has been agreed".

While this is not a book about intellectual property, and was never intended to be, it makes numerous mentions of IP and provides a helpful commercial context within which to understand how India views IP issues when weaving a tapestry of positions and commitments that may at first glance seem puzzling to the outsider. It's well worth a read.

Bibliographic details: xix + 214 pages. Hardback. ISBN 978 1 84844 795 0. Price £ 59.95, or£53.96 if you buy it from the publisher's website here. Rupture factor: low.