IP REVIEW; IP&T

Latest IP Review

The Winter 2005/6 issue of CPA's freebie client magazine IP Review has arrived. It has put on a good deal of weight over the winter, since it's now risen to 44 pages (if you count the covers).

Talking of the cover, it's got a really scary picture of patent agent Dr Caroline Sincock, Chief Intellectual Assets Officer of Glasgow's Intellectual Assets Centre (seen here, above right, smiling). Dr Sincock's brief is to raise awareness of IP as assets and to accustom Scottish businesses to thinking in terms of them. The website's very impressive. Scotland, once a leading centre of technological advance, is now more likely to summon up associations of deep-fried Mars bars (left), Trainspotting and a dreadful international football team. The IPKat sincerely wants this initiative to succeed and wishes the Centre every good fortune.

Other features worth noting in this issue are

* Daniel Greenberg's review of the IP set-up in South Africa and

* Balsamically fruity cult litigant Ralf Sieckmann (right: remember his ECJ litigation over the registration of olfactory signs as trade marks?) asks whether holograms will provide the next generation of trade marks.

If you want your own copy of IP Review, email CPA here.


IP&T

The first issue of Butterworths' Intellectual Property & Technology Cases for 2006, edited by Michael Silverleaf QC (right), contains five case reports, this time all from the UK. Two are House of Lords decisions (Naomi Campbell v Mirror Group Newspapers No.2 , on whether unsuccessful defendants have to pay the full whack when claimants have made conditional fee arrangements and Synthon BV v SmithKline Beecham, the latest in a series of "last words" on disclosure and enablement in patent law).

There's also PPL v Reader, a colourful little decision of Mr Justice Pumfrey on whether the cost of getting a naughty defendant committed for contempt of court can be compensated through an award of additional damages, plus two Court of Appeal decisions: Nokia v InterDigital (stay of proceedings in a patent dispute) and Fraser-Woodward v BBC (fair use of celebrity snaps of the Beckhams in TV programme about tabloid newspapers).