Friday fantasies

Friday comes round again, with IPKat team member Jeremy still in Nice, where the MARQUES winter meetings (on which see the Class 46 posts for yesterday and today) has now come to an end. Jeremy was very happy to see how much Class 46, and the concept of responsible IP blogs in general, has become part of the way of life of so many MARQUES members. Meanwhile, now's the time to check the IPKat's side bar for information concerning conferences, seminars and other IP calendar dates ...

The Court of Justice of the European Union has told the IPKat's vigilant friend Hugo Cox that its rulings in Cases C-236 to 238/08 Google France, Google (the AdWords cases), referred for a preliminary ruling by the French, will be given on 23 March 2010. Hugo has kindly told the Kats, who are passing the word on to you.

It's not often that the weather plays a role in intellectual property matters, but the IPKat notes with interest two matters concerning which the Canadians claim superiority over their neighbours: the first, unsurprisingly, is that Canada handles large snowfalls more efficiently than the good denizens of Washington DC.

Left: an igloo? No, it's the White House ...

The second is that, as the IPKat's friend Howard Knopf explains on his Excess Copyright blog, Canada's copyright law provides stronger protection than that of the USA.

The IPKat's Australian friend Ben McEnierny writes to inform him that Australia’s first Peer-to-Patent pilot project is fast approaching its half-way point and is about to enter its second phase. Says a highly excited Ben:

"Peer-to-Patent Australia is a joint initiative of the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) and IP Australia designed to improve the patent examination process and the quality of issued patents by encouraging members of the public to contribute to the search for prior art.

Right: Novel? Perhaps not, but the platypus could never be described as obvious ...

The current batch of patent applications currently on the web site will be open for peer review only for another three weeks until 9 March 2010. The second phase of the project will then commence, with a new set of patent applications becoming available on the website for peer review.

QUT and IP Australia invite appropriately qualified people to contribute to the project. Members of the public are encouraged to join the online peer community to review the patent applications and put forward relevant prior art.

The pilot has made a successful start, following its launch in December 2009. The community of reviewers has identified 40 prior art references and contributed 63 comments in the first 10 weeks of operation.

To register as a peer reviewer, visit the Peer-to-Patent Australia website here".