WILKOF'S IN TOWN; BRIGHT LITTLE BOOK ON TMs

Come for coffee ...!

The IPKat is pleased to announce that legal scholar Neil J. Wilkof (right, of Herzog Fox & Neeman) is passing through London on Tuesday, 24 January 2006. Neil is the principal author of Wilkof & Burkitt, Trade Mark Licensing (2nd edition, 2004) - the veritable bible of trade mark transactions. An inspiring lecturer, he also cultivates a wide range of IP interests outside trade mark law.


If you'd like to join Neil for coffee, he'll be at the Patisserie Concerto (a.k.a. Caffe Concerto, left), 79-81 Regent Street, London W1 (opposite the Cafe Royal, near Piccadilly) from around 5.15pm till 6.45pm. Just pop in and say hello, ask a few cheery questions about trade mark transactions or just generally be social -- this is your opportunity! IPKat co-blogmeister Jeremy will be there too.

There's no need to RSVP - it's totally informal - but if you let Jeremy know you're coming he can make arrangements accordingly (like shoving a few tables together and shooing off alien non-IP persons ...)

Harmonised Trade Mark Law in Europe

Turning over the pages of Ulrich Hildebrandt's little book, Harmonised Trade Mark Law in Europe (just now published in English by Carl Heymanns Verlag), the IPKat was delighted to see how useful it is. It's a short (156 pages), succinct guide to the case law of the European Court of Justice on Council Directive 89/104 (the so-called harmonisation directive) and Council Regulation 40/94 on the Community trade mark, broken down on an Article-by-Article basis.

Although it is not a work of scholarship per se, it is unmistakably the work of a scholar in its tidy, highly-organised presentation of key information (its author, a practitioner, also lectures at the Heinrich-Heine-University in Düsseldorf). If you're planning to do any research into ECJ rulings on harmonised issues, then this is an ideal initial research tool.

The IPKat hopes this slender publication will be kept up-to-date and a fresh edition issued annually because of its high utility value. Right now there are nearly 80 cases featured; as time progresses, the number of cases grows and the human memory becomes saturated, this work will become all the more useful.

An unusual advantage of this book is pointed out by the publishers: it has an identical twin in the form of a German-language edition. This will assist any English-speaker who needs to file an opposition to a Community trade mark application where the language of the proceedings is German, since he can easily identify the equivalent vocabulary. At 48 euro (that's around £33) it won't break the bank either!

More on the author's interests here