Copyright evening coming up; Designs at MARQUES

BLACA - the British Literary and Artistic Copyright Association - has told the IPKat that David Carson has agreed, en route to Geneva, to stop over in London and give a talk on 1 October on the future of US copyright law. The official title is "United States Copyright Law - Should Europeans Care?"

David is the Associate Register for Policy and International Affairs at the United States Copyright Office. We have also lined up two commentators: Shira Perlmutter, who is the Executive Vice President, IFPI and Laurence Djolakian who is the Legal Counsel for the Motion Picture Association - Europe. Gillian Davies from Hogarth Chambers will be chairing.

Uma Suthersanen, who chairs BLACA, tells the Kat that this is a FREE EVENT. It's being hosted by Bird & Bird in the firm's London office (you can locate it via the map, above right). If you'd like to attend, contact Emma Rumens here.



Although the IPKat left the MARQUES conference in Porto (scroll down for the six earlier posts) a little early, he is still receiving more information about it. He has heard that the Designs Workshop session run by MARQUES stalwart David Stone (Howrey) was officially "sold out" and that even a WIPO official was turned away.

Left: the IPKat found this striking Community design image on the website of Hindle Lowther, Edinburgh

The background to the workshop was that it sought to introduce the MARQUES report on the first 150 invalidity decisions by OHIM on RCDs - registered Community designs (see earlier IPKat postings here and here).

David has told the IPKat that the MARQUES Designs Team will be updating the report (there are now over 400 invalidity decisions, including 60-odd appeals to the Boards of Appeal), with the plan of launching the update at the Barcelona Winter Meeting (next year - but there are not yet any details on the website). Says David:

"If any IPKat reader has suggestions on ways to make the report more useful, please get in touch. For example, we will be dropping many of the statistics - they were time-consuming to collect, and not helpful (other than perhaps for prurient interest)".

The workshop discussion was wide-ranging and highly engaged. Issues discusssed included:
* should logos really be registrable as RCDs? (the consensus answer was yes - but some care will be needed not to restrict the value of designs for 3D objects just to keep logos in line);
* should RCDs be invalidated for non-use after a given period? (NO!);
* should we all be engaging with the RCD system more, particularly our US colleagues? (YES!);
* should practitioners use the verbal description when filing an RCD? (no).

The IPKat has the PowerPoints for this session and suspects that serious students of the subject might just like to take a look at them if you drop him a hint.