Recent publications

The May issue of Euromoney's Managing Intellectual Property reached the IPKat a bit late this month - but its content is in no way diminished by the fact that we are now in June. Pick of the crop in this issue is the Open Letter to eBay by SJ Berwin partner Ray Black. This is a full-blooded three-page assault on both the legal and the ethical cotton wool in which online auction sites have wrapped themselves, while profiting from the sale of counterfeit and infringing goods by others, and it deserves a full and reasoned response.

The IPKat is by no means as convinced as Ray is on the legal or the ethical front, but he agrees that it is very much in eBay's interest to be seen to take an active role in monitoring abuses of its platform and in assisting legitimate traders in rooting out those who routinely abuse it. Merpel agrees that more should be done, not least because online sites enable (for example) dealers in unauthorised grey goods imports and factory overruns can sell to the ultimate consumer directly, thus reducing the risk and expense of traditional grey goods trade. Fixed-site online traders like CD-WOW can be targeted, test-purchased and picked off one at a time by dedicated IP owners or the groups that represent them (see IPKat post here), but picking off sellers of fakes and frauds through eBay is a far tougher proposition.

Contents of the current issue here


The June issue of the Sweet & Maxwell monthly European Intellectual Property Review is quite eventful. This issue leads with a note by Herman Cohen Jehoram on a case that the poor Kat is really struggling to understand as a legal proposition - G-Star v Benetton (the Elwood jeans case). The Dutch Supreme Court appears to have evolved a doctrine of "dilution of copyright" through "degeneration of a work into unprotected style". Says the IPKat, what seems to be happening is that, while in other countries it is the law of trade marks/passing off that protects acts of (alleged) unfair competition, in the Netherlands this seems to be the task of copyright - especially since it's not so long since the Dutch declared that you can have copyright in a scent.
Other interesting bits in this issue includes an encomium for the European Patent Litigation Agreement by Professor Anthony Arnull and Lord Justice Robin Jacob and a neat note by Sven Bostyn (IVIR) on the European Patent Office's Enlarged Board of Appeal decision in G 01/04 Diagnostic methods.


Issue 7(May/June) of Globe Business Publishing's World Trademark Review continues to impress. This issue has a cover story on the remarkable evolution of INTEL ("the invisible product with a brand worth billions"), carrying an interview with trade marks anbd brands supremo Ruby Zefo which pitches forwards into future brand promotion strategy as well as treading the usual historical path. There's also a brand power survey which has absolutely no shocks and surprises at all - the IPKat says this is a comforting sign that reality is now learning how to adapt to the exigencies of research methodology.