More Monday Miscellany

Today's Peer-to-Patent seminar, organised by the IPKat weblog and kindly hosted by London-based law firm Olswang LLP, was much enjoyed and appreciated by a dedicated audience of hard-bitten patent addicts who stayed right on to the end -- no mean feat, considering that it lasted for three fairly intensive hours, though the miserably rainy weather might have contributed to the marked reluctance of those present to leave.  Intellectual Property Office (IPO) patent examiner Nigel Hanley opened the proceedings with a concise account of how the IPO's version of Peer-to-Patent (P2P) was intended to work; UCL-and-IPKat Matt Fisher then gave a candid account of the P2P experiences of the United States and Australia.  Barbara Cookson (Filemot) -- who has had experience both of the filing of written observations under the Patents Act 1977,s.21 and of the US P2P process -- told us what it felt like to engage in a third party criticism of someone else's patent.  Alasdaire Poore (Mills & Reeve) then spoke of the patent attorneys' impressions of  the proposals and (this being a special bonus) Roger Burt (former President of the IP Federation) told us of the submissions to the Gowers Review which led to the recommendation that the IPO conduct its own P2P experiment.  The Kat is waiting to find out if he can use the IPO's PowerPoints, so there will be a further post in due course.  Meanwhile, he just wants to thank all those who participated for all their efforts.  Meanwhile, here's the important stuff:

• Pilot Project Page here
• Pilot Blog here
• IPO Web page here
• Views and Feedback welcome if you email the IPO here
• You can follow P2P on Twitter @Peertopatent_UK

From the IPKat's friend Chris Torrero comes this link to a feature in The Chronicle entitled "What's at Stake in the Georgia State Copyright Case". The Kat was really excited at the thought that the small Black Sea state of Georgia was host to some high class copyright litigation -- but to his disappointment it turned out instead to be the other Georgia, home of Coca-Cola and Jimmy Carter. Never mind, it still has plenty to commend it.  As the feature explains:

"A closely watched trial in federal court in Atlanta, Cambridge University Press et al. v. Patton et al., is pitting faculty, libraries, and publishers against one another in a case that could clarify the nature of copyright and define the meaning of fair use in the digital age. Under copyright law, the doctrine of fair use allows some reproduction of copyrighted material, with a classroom exemption permitting an unspecified amount to be reproduced for educational purposes.

At issue before the court is the practice of putting class readings on electronic reserve (and, by extension, on faculty Web sites). Cambridge, Oxford University Press, and SAGE Publications, with support from the Association of American Publishers and the Copyright Clearance Center, are suing four administrators at Georgia State University. But the publishers more broadly allege that the university (which, under "state sovereign immunity," cannot be prosecuted in federal court) has enabled its staff and students to claim what amounts to a blanket exemption to copyright law through an overly lenient definition of the classroom exemption. The plaintiffs are asking for an injunction to stop university personnel from making material available on e-reserve without paying licensing fees. A decision is expected in several weeks ...:".

What's fun here is that The Chronicle asked a selection of "experts in scholarly communications" what the case may mean for the future.  Click the link and you can read their opinions.


Around the blogs. If you want to offer your advice on the position of third parties with regard to software licences and the EU Software Directive, there are questions posed by a 1709 Blog reader here.  Simone Blakeney comments on the Tyson tattoo on Art & Artifice here.  A couple of Kats have been posting on IP Finance recently:  Birgit has proffered a sad little farewell to Knut the immensely measurable polar bear, whose post-mortem value is in increasing topic for speculation, while Neil has asked some telling questions concerning the IP basis on which Groupon's phenomenal success has possibly not been built.  Trade mark enthusiasts may want to take a look at this post on Falk Metzler's Visae Patentes entitled "OHIM User Associations Comment on Revision of CTM System at Hearing Before EU Commission", which gives a full and helpful account of some of the very serious thought that is going into the restructuring of the edifice of trade mark law in Europe.