Passionate about IP! Since June 2003 the IPKat has covered copyright, patent, trade mark, designs, info-tech and confidentiality issues from a mainly UK and European perspective. Read, post comments and participate!

The team is Eleonora Rosati, Annsley Merelle Ward and Merpel. E-mail the Kats here!

The team is joined by GuestKats Kevin Bercimuelle-Chamot, Jocelyn Bosse, Alessandro Cerri, Anastasiia Kyrylenko, Marcel Pemsel and Anna Maria Stein.

SpecialKats: Verónica Rodríguez Arguijo (TechieKat), Antonios Baris (Book Review Editor), Rose Hughes (PatKat) and Chijioke Okorie (Africa Correspondent).

InternKats: Asude Sena Moya and Söğüt Atilla.
Home / non-traditional marks / OHIM / patents / trade mark / UK-IPO / Tarzan meets Wallace and Grommit

Tarzan meets Wallace and Grommit

- , , , ,
Aaaaaah-ah-ah-ah-ah-aaaaaah? Ah ha!

The IPKat is interested to see that OHIM is drumming up interest in its trade mark applications. The IPKat recently reported that the Second Board of Appeal refused a sonogram representing Tarzan’s yell. Now the OHIM General Affairs and External Relationships Department has issued a press release to say that although the sonogram was refused registration, a musical notation of the yell, applied for at the same time has been registered, and an application is pending for the sound represented by a sonogram and an MP3 file (a possiblity since 2005). Says OHIM lawyer Wouter Verburg :

“We are getting increasing interest in this area –everything from Tarzan’s call to a lion’s roar [which was refused notes the IPKat]. If they comply with the formalities and are distinctive they can be registered, and we now accept MP3 files as part of this process, provided they are filed together with the sonogram. As technology moves on we have moved too.”

The IPKat wonders, what’s the scope of protection of musical notation representing a yell? All instruments? Just the human voice?

Wakey, wakey

At last, a useful invention. The Waker Upper 3000 is the brainchild of the pupils of East Allington Primary School, south Devon, and has won the UK-IPO’s ‘Cracking Ideas’ competition for primary schools. The device features the rather lethal-sounding combination of a ‘mallet, headphones, a jet of water and eyelid openers to keep people awake during boring activities such as homework.’

Leaving aside his concerns about introducing awareness of patenting directly into the national curriculum, the IPKat says, wouldn’t it be nice for the children if all intellectual property professionals were provided with a prototype of this invention? Not that intellectual property is ever boring, of course…

Tarzan meets Wallace and Grommit Tarzan meets Wallace and Grommit Reviewed by Anonymous on Tuesday, November 20, 2007 Rating: 5

2 comments:

  1. AnonymousWednesday, 21 November 2007 at 11:32:00 GMT

    Not sure about the mallet. While it might wake up someone who's asleep, it can also render quite unconscious anyone who was already awake. Query: is it possible to knock someone out when they're already asleep?

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousWednesday, 21 November 2007 at 11:34:00 GMT

    Not even a top soprano could sing a BÙ an octave above the stave. Let alone a testosterone-laden Tarzan. Nor is the rhythm what (I think) most people would recognise as a Tarzan yell. And the orchestral instruments you could use for this range is pretty limited: violin, harp or flute. Not what you'd call the Johnny Weismuller image.

    Plus, bearing in mind that there is no tempo on the notation, is this clear enough to be a mark at all?

    ReplyDelete

All comments must be moderated by a member of the IPKat team before they appear on the blog. Comments will not be allowed if the contravene the IPKat policy that readers' comments should not be obscene or defamatory; they should not consist of ad hominem attacks on members of the blog team or other comment-posters and they should make a constructive contribution to the discussion of the post on which they purport to comment.

It is also the IPKat policy that comments should not be made completely anonymously, and users should use a consistent name or pseudonym (which should not itself be defamatory or obscene, or that of another real person), either in the "identity" field, or at the beginning of the comment. Current practice is to, however, allow a limited number of comments that contravene this policy, provided that the comment has a high degree of relevance and the comment chain does not become too difficult to follow.

Learn more here: http://ipkitten.blogspot.com/p/want-to-complain.html

Subscribe to: Post Comments ( Atom )
Powered by Blogger.