Friday favourites

There's something new-ish on the IPKat's sidebar: a blogroll of weblogs which are in some way or other connected with the IPKat or its various authors. To his slight alarm, the Kat notes that this feature, which comes as a standard Blogger gadget, has its own rather idiosyncratic approach towards updating itself -- so he's watching to see if, like much of the things that go wrong on the blogosphere, either (i) it cures itself or (ii) a kindly reader tells the IPKat how to cure it.

The IPKat need hardly remind his regular readers of the multitudinous meetings listed in the Forthcoming Events feature of his sidebar. However, the 3,700+ readers who get their IPKat by email may just need the occasional reminder to visit the blog itself (many readers have not noticed the colour-change and general smartening up, it seems) ...


The IPKat thanks his respected and venerable friend Dirk Visser for information concerning a forthcoming reference to the European Court of Justice of a couple of questions emanating from the Brussels Court of Appeal and which concern the SatCab Directive. To save your headaches the Kat has kindly located the detailed bits on The 1709 Blog, where they can be lovingly savoured by copyright specialists and skipped over by ordinary mortals. You can read the gory details here.


If you're in blog-hopping mood right now and feel strongly about the absurdity of the inability of European customs authorities to seize and detain counterfeit products in transit as they cross the territory of the European Economic Area, you should take a look at the jiplp blog, which has very recently given some air to a powerful yet well-reasoned polemic by two Howrey lawyers, Willem Hoyng and Frank Eijsvogels, on the need to maintain the fiction that fake goods crossing the EEA were actually made there. This piece, posted now so that interested parties can read it before the Court of Appeal, England and Wales, hears Nokia's appeal in the controversial decision of Nokia v HMCR (see here for IPKat note on the trial decision) can be accessed here.


Paul Jurcys has emailed the IPKat with news of the New Draft of the Transparency Proposal on Jurisdiction, Choice of Law and Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Judgments in Intellectual Property, which has just been made available online. This project, initiated in 2004 and funded by Japan's Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), aims to make Japanese law more accessible to legal community around the globe by translating statutes and court decisions into English [Hooray, says the IPKat]. 11 research groups comprising 45 scholars are currently dealing with various areas of commercial law, including IP. Ultimately the Proposal will facilitate deliberation as to how the international jurisdiction of Japanese courts should be constituted in order to manage cross-border IP litigation effectively. Also, regarding choice of law rules for cross-border exploitation of IP rights, the Proposal will invite law makers to include specific choice of law provisions for IP.

ECTA, the European Communities Trade Mark Association, has smartened up its website. If you fancy taking a peep, it's here. ECTA is of course not to be confused with MARQUES (which used to be termed 'the Association of European Trade Mark Owners), which has been gradually implementing its own ongoing website smartening-up exercise here.

It might have the most boring of names, but never tangle with General Patent Corporation, says the IPKat. According to its recent news release, GPC negotiated a successful outcome on behalf of its client Common Ground Seminars in a service mark infringement claim against Trump University, New York City. Without any sense of humour or irony, GPC reports that the mark in question -- almost certainly unregistrable in Europe in respect of conflict resolution workshops -- consisted of the words NEGOTIATE TO WIN.

The IPKat reckons that Graeme Gilfillan must be feeling fairly pleased with the result of SAMRO v Gilfillan -- an attempt by the South African Music Rights Organisation Ltd to gag him from from making further criticisms of its operations, which they regarded as defamatory or injurious. Graeme has been campaigning against perceived failures of the organisation to pay sums owed or to provide adequate accounts in respect of royalties earned on the works of dead members. The IPKat likes collecting societies because they do things that individual rights owners can't -- but his favourite ones are the most transparent ones, and no collecting society has ever died of greater transparency. You can get the judgment and some links to the background from Afro-IP here.