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 / dilution / EU / sound recordings / term / trade mark / French connections

French connections

- , , , ,
France backs term extension for sound recordings

It seems that the show’s not over for an extension to the copyright term of sound recordings. According to an article in Friday’s Times, France is due to make the extension a priority of its upcoming six-month presidency of the EU, despite opposition from the UK and Germany. According to the French Culture Minister, Christine Albanel

“Today, whole swathes of the recording catalogue of the 1950s and 1960s, representing a significant part of the national pop heritage, are falling progressively into the public domain…That creates an obvious problem of fairness. Artists who began their careers very young are being stripped today of all remuneration from their first recordings.”

The IPKat can’t quite share Ms Albanel’s indignation. There aren’t many other industries where success in your youth guarantees you an income for life.

For French-speakers only

Speaking of the French, they will be the only people able to understand last week’s Art.8(5) (dilution and unfair advantage) CFI case regarding the CAMEL trade mark, which still isn’t available in English. Even worse, Professor Lionel Bently has informed the IPKat that the ECJ’s judgment in Procter & Gamble v. OHIM, Case C-107/03P (23 Sept 2004) is not available in English from the ECJ’s website. The IPKat could (very very grudgingly) understand why a CFI judgment mightn’t be translated instantly, but a more than three year wait for an ECJ decision is very poor.

French connections French connections Reviewed by Anonymous on Monday, February 04, 2008 Rating: 5

9 comments:

  1. AnonymousMonday, 4 February 2008 at 13:50:00 GMT

    just for your information:
    Judgment in case C-107/03 P has not been published because considered not worth of publication. Therefore it has not been translated into the other EU languages.

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousMonday, 4 February 2008 at 15:23:00 GMT

    It's not like French pop music is any good......

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousMonday, 4 February 2008 at 15:36:00 GMT

    .. Should read 'Lionel Bently'... (from the Department of Minuscule Emendations).

    ReplyDelete
  4. AnonymousMonday, 4 February 2008 at 16:32:00 GMT

    Thank you to all anonymice (which I assume is the plural form of people who wish to remain anonymous). I'm rather disturbed by the idea of someone deciding that case law isn't important enough to translate. Shouldn't that be for potential litigants to decide?

    ReplyDelete
  5. AnonymousMonday, 4 February 2008 at 17:53:00 GMT

    Why should Lionel Bently be 'Lionel Bently'? I like him better without the quote marks.

    ReplyDelete
  6. AnonymousTuesday, 5 February 2008 at 11:24:00 GMT

    To Ilanah:
    Easy, just imagine you signed the london agreement on case law.
    Don't you feel much better, more modern? No money to spend on translation anymore?

    Ok, I was just kidding. We non English speaker have to live with English as the lingua franca, but you English speaker please try to not take it as a given, and remember to show some empathy sometimes.

    ReplyDelete
  7. AnonymousTuesday, 5 February 2008 at 12:51:00 GMT

    It's not really a matter of empathy. The EU has many official languages. Case law of its highest court should be available in all of them, be it English, Slovene or French.

    ReplyDelete
  8. AnonymousTuesday, 5 February 2008 at 13:17:00 GMT

    Saro cretino, ma considerando che é stato pubbliccato in una lingua ufficiale, questo caso mi sembra perfettamente in linea con l'accordo di Londra, che permette di risparmiare sulle traduzioni. E siamo tutti d'accordo che l'accordo di Londra 'e una buona cosa. O soltanto se la linguza ufficiale in questione é l'inglese?

    the same non-english speaking of above.

    ReplyDelete
  9. AnonymousTuesday, 5 February 2008 at 22:40:00 GMT

    'should read Lionel Bently' would be a recommendation (certainly justified) to study his published work. Our previous note advised reducing his vowel count (now done).
    Department of Minuscule Emendations

    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.