PODS LAW - UK REGISTRY CASTS AROUND FOR NEW AUDIENCE

Pods law - UK Registry casts around for new audience

The IPKat thanks Lee Curtis (Pinsent Masons) for directing him to the UK Trade Mark Registry's first podcast. Lee describes it as being "actually quite good" and the Kat is inclined to agree.

Mike Knight (one of the more serious inhabitants of the Registry) and Michael Edenborough (Hogarth Chambers) discuss three recent trade mark decisions: the SPECIAL FX, SENSORNET and NIRVANA cases (copies of which are thoughtfully linked on-screen so you can read them while you listen). The discussion of SPECIAL FX, now awaiting a ruling from the Court of Appeal, was particularly well handled, weighing up the prospect of the end of trade mark oppositions as we know them against the beginning of a boom time for heavyweight oppositions into which the parties pour vast resources.

Pluses

* the chance to hear two articulate exponents of trade mark law elucidating some of its finer points;

* a good choice of cases about which constructive and at times thought-provoking comments could be made;

* the transcript is made available too.

Minuses

* the speakers' voices were insufficiently differentiated: the IPKat wasn't always totally sure who was speaking (Merpel says, what we need is more Welsh accents, boyo - or either Mike or Michael should have a female voice-over, if an authoritative female commentator is not to be selected);

* the website info tells you how big the file is (which is unlikely to be a problem given the lack of video and mega-musicalcontent), but not how long the podcast lasts (the IPKat thinks it was 19 minutes), which is a much more useful thing to learn;

Something for the future?

* it would be useful for non-experts if they could click an icon next to the podcast icon that gave them an alphabetical list of technical terms and jargon words they could check while they listened.

Listen to the podcast here