PATENT ENFORCEMENT BOOK; TRANSLATION HELP WANTED

Patent Enforcement Worldwide

The IPKat has been browsing the pages of Patent Enforcement Worldwide, a collection of essays edited by Christopher Heath and Laurence Petit. The essays form a group of national reports in which patent experts describe infringement procedures in their respective jurisdiction. This volume, which is actually the second edition of a dedicated issue of IIC from October 2000, has been put together in honour of Dieter Stauder (right), the German legal scholar of European Patent Office fame who is now with Bardehle. Although the book was published nearly a year ago, by Hart Publishing in the UK/US, it seems to have received little attention so far which is a pity.

The blurb on the publisher's website says:

"Patent infringement procedures are an instrument whereby the patentee defends his protected invention against unlawful use by a third party (the alleged infringer). The difficulty is that the patent is no solid object whose damage can be easily detected; it belongs to that group of rights whose infringement is not easy to determine. The patent is a right described by words, and those words, written into a claim, are so complicated that laymen and lawyers alike fail to understand them. This is the special feature which distinguishes the patent right.

... Since the first edition of this book was published in 2000, developments in the field of patent enforcement have been significant and required a major rewriting of all the seven original contributions (the UK, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Italy, Japan and the US): more than 100 decisions have been added. For the second edition, another eight countries have been included: three from Eastern Europe (Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary), two from Asia (China and Korea), two from Latin America (Argentina and Brazil), and one from Europe (Switzerland) and there is a new chapter by Dieter Stauder on European issues of patent enforcement: cross-border litigation, cross-border assistance in obtaining evidence, and the new European Enforcement Directive".

The IPKat is amused to see patent infringement procedures described as a means by which the patent owner defends the patent. What he actually does with it is to attack the infringer. The patent doesn't need defending unless someone out there wants to revoke it.

A patent litigator (left) ponders the meaning of a claim: "surely it must have meant something when it was written ..."

Merpel is even more amused to read the bit about "a right described by words ... so complicated that laymen and lawyers alike fail to understand them. This is the special feature which distinguishes the patent right". Surely not!

The book's ISBN is 1-84113-538-0 and the price is £55 in paperback (pretty cheap for a specialist publication of nearly 500 pages).


Translations into English

IPKat co-blogmeister Jeremy is looking for a bit of assistance from someone who can translate trade mark cases from Spanish to English with a view to reporting them in the European Trade Mark Reports. Ideally the translator should be a native English-speaker. There is some remuneration, but it is not at all generous. Some occasional help is also needed with German trade mark and copyright cases, also for a relative pittance.

The real rewards are (i) the satisfaction of seeing one's work in print and (ii) being able to put on your CV the fact that you've translated cases for the ETMR and its sister publication the European Copyright and Design Reports. If you're interested in having a go, email Jeremy here.