Around the periodicals

The May 2008 issue of Patent World (click here for contents and details) leads with a double question from engineer-turned-solicitor David Knight (Field Fisher Waterhouse): "why is it more expensive to enforce patent rights in Europe and what is being done to reduce the costs?". Optimistically, David feels that things are looking up and, in his own words, that "the costs of enforcing patent rights in the UK and Europe will continue to reduce" (this issue went to press too early to take account of the startling costs decision in RIM v Visto (noted here by the IPKat), which is fortunately not typical of the genre).

Right: the Royal Courts of Justice, London -- an effective device for the distribution of wealth ...

Another notable piece in this issue comes from Mike Thumm (Chipworks), which looks at reverse engineering -- not from the traditional point of view of working out how you can make a competitor's products but from a strategic, IP-management perspective.


The 8-times a year Sweet & Maxwell Journal of Business Law (see webpage here) is not known for its IP content, but every so often it publishes a substantial item in that area. Issues 3 and 4 have recently been published. Issue 3 has nothing on IP as such, but "Termination of a Contract by a Party in Breach", by Australian academic Wayne Courtney, covers in general terms a topic that is of keen interest to IP licensors and their licensees, for obvious reasons. Issue 4 has a major feature by two Singaporean academics, Cheng Lim Saw and Susanna H. S. Leong, "Defining Criminal Liability for Primary Acts of Copyright Infringement: the Singapore Experience". These are the same authors, the IPKat favourably recalls, who wrote a very good piece, "Copyright Infringement in a Borderless World - Does Territoriality Matter?", in the Spring 2007 issue of Oxford University Press's International Journal of Law and Information Technology.


Out of the same stable as the JBL but with a very much more frequent IP-specific content is the bimonthly collection of European Commercial Cases (see here for title details). This issue features two IP cases:

* Experience Hendrix LLC v Purple Haze Records Ltd and others (Court of Appeal, England and Wales, noted here by the IPKat), a ruling on whether the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 applied to performances made by a performer before that Act came into force and where the performance took place in a country that was not, at the time it took place, a "qualifying performance";

* Jean-Philippe X v Universal Music and others (Cour de Cassation de Paris), a case explaining the position under French law where a producer continued to exploit the exclusive rights vested in him by a contract that was later rescinded, the contract itself being silent as to the effect of rescission.