Recent periodicals

The December 2008 issue of Oxford University Press's flagship IP journal, the Journal of Intellectual Property Law and Practice (JIPLP), has now been published. Topics featured in this issue include the following:

* "Knut, Flocke, and Co: the bear facts revealed", by JIPLP editorial board member and Class 46 team blogger Birgit Clark (Boult Wade Tennant). This article has already been extensively previewed by the IPKat here and is available in full as a seasonal gift here.
* "Generic competition and pharma patent strategies" by the Addleshaw Goddard triumvirate of Brian Whitehead, Stuart Jackson and Richard Kempner.
* "Authorship, ownership, wikiship: copyright in the twenty-first century", a serious piece for a change by IPKat blogger and JIPLP editor Jeremy.

The editorial for this issue, "Patent Delay", considers some of the issues raised by the backlog of unexamined patents at the European Patent Office and some possible solutions. You can read this editorial in full, and at no cost, here.

Read all the editorials of the past twelve months here
Full contents of this issue here
For free sample, click here; to subscribe, click here; to write, click here


If you're interested in seeking to unscramble the incredible complexity of European law and policy regarding the three-way-relationship between copyright, data protection and internet use, there's something here for you: the International Journal of Law and Information Technology (IJLIT), published three times a year by Oxford University Press, has a full-bodied analysis by Okechukwu Benjamin Vincents (left), "When rights clash online: the tracking of P2P copyright infringements v the EC Personal Data Directive". The author, a PhD candidate at the National University of Singapore, is making quite a reputation for himself in the field of online line. The Kat suspects that this article was written a long time ago since it contains no reference to Case C‑275/06, Productores de Música de España (Promusicae) v Telefónica de España SAU (noted by the IPKat here), a January 2008 decision on which, he feels, the author's views would be most welcome.


The amazing thing about coexistence agreements is that you wait ages for a decent article and then they turn up in bunches. First came Matthew Elsmore's academic piece in Script-ed, and now there's also "Trademark coexistence agreements -- practicalities and pitfalls" by the Herbert Smith duo of Joel Smith and Megan Compton. You'll find this article in the November/December issue of World Trademark Review, which just keeps getting better and better. Other features in this issue are a strong piece by Paul Reeskamp (Allen & Overy, Amsterdam) on the lack of consistency between European nations in the application of laws on border seizures, and Jessica L. Rothstein ("The candid age") on the need for US trade mark applicants to adjust their strategies to accommodate the shifting sands of USPTO campaign to stamp out fraudulent applications. For the full contents of this issue click here.


The December 2008 issue of Sweet & Maxwell's flagship monthly, the European Intellectual Property Review, carries lots of exciting stuff. There are two Opinions, one on the welcome efforts to establish a balanced interpretation of the increasingly controversial 'three-step test' by which exceptions and limitations to copyright protection are measured (see IPKat here); the other is an outspoken and entirely justifiable assault on the European Commission's 'intellectual property package' by Bernt Hugenholtz (see IPKat here). Eddy Ventose adds an analysis of the patentability (or not) of medical treatments for animals under the European Patent Convention. The EIPR's new, freshly-designed web page is here. For an inspection copy of the EIPR, though not necessarily this issue, email Jo Slinn here.