Wednesday whimsies

A thousand thanks to the IPKat's friends at the London office of Latham & Watkins LLP for hosting this year's IP Publishers and Editors Lunch on behalf of this weblog.  A crowd of over 50 participants, coming from as far afield as Belgium, Germany, Spain and the United States, enjoyed over two hours of professional information-exchange, high-quality networking, wine and salmon. Keynote speaker was Nick Gingell (Lawtext), whose reminiscences concerning the birth-pangs of the European Intellectual Property Review in 1978 were complemented by some searching questions concerning the future of IP publishing in the digital era and the threat that the new media might kill the goose that laid the golden eggs.  Wilhelm Warth (C. H. Beck) has already been invited to speak next year.  The IPKat will announce the date and venue a little nearer the time.

Are you sitting comfortably? On Tuesday 30 November the IPKat broke the news of the Virgin comfy chair patent decision of Mr Justice Arnold -- an unusual decision in which the court gave summary judgment in a patent infringement action -- but  he didn't have time to comment on it. He has since received a neat little summary of the decision from his friends at Taylor Wessing, which he has gratefully posted after his own piece here.  If you're not particularly interested in fancy aeroplane chairs and just want to read the judge's excellent summary of the principles of summary judgment and how they work in relation to patent claims, you can read that extract on PatLit here.

No more partying for Novartis. Talking of Mr Justice Arnold, that very same judge drew the Kats' attention to a recent Patents Court for England and Wales decision of Mr Justice Floyd in Daiichi Sankyo v Comptroller of Patents in which Novartis was not allowed to join this case as a party in order to participate in its reference to the Court of Justice for a preliminary ruling.  Since the dispute involved the somewhat recondite topic of supplementary protection certificates for pharmaceutical patents, the Kats donated the case to The SPC Blog, which has recorded it here.

Grand unveiling in the offing.  The International Trademark Association (INTA) is unveiling its new website on 6 January 2011. Members will be receiving further details, if they have not already done so.  The IPKat warns that the current site at www.inta.org will be closed from 3 to 5 January in preparation for the big event, so if you are a real trade mark enthusiast you may want to take your three days of annual holiday then.

Latest PCC Page.  The ninth instalment of PatLit's PCC Pages series on litigation before the Patents County Court for England and Wales was posted yesterday here.  In this episode Cautious Co learns how to issue proceedings.  Next week's PCC Page will be the last before Christmas, but the series resumes on the second Tuesday of January.


Everything in moderation.  Till last week anyone wishing to sign up to receive the 1709 Blog's copyright law posts by email could do so simply by popping their email addresses into the little box.  Now they have to give their name and say why they want to receive the blog by email.  This is because the blog has suffered a mass sign-up by people with names like xjhfds.fjkljkls and klfgflk.kgrojldf, who appear to be exercising a malign influence over the blog's group email services.  Sorry!

On Monday the IPKat scooped an English translation of the controversial Dutch decision in the Eyeworks case (here) on how copyright owners can actually benefit from the downloading of copyright-protected works from an unauthorised source.  Later that same day the IPKat's benefactor Dirk Visser furnished a second English translation -- this time of another case that ran on much the same lines but was somewhat more complex.  It has been posted on The 1709 Blog together with a short explanation here.


One for the Supremes.  The British version of the Supreme Court has given permission to appeal in Ajinimoto Sweeteners Europe SAS v Asda Stores Ltd, an exciting malicious falsehood action in which it is argued that, by praising their own brand products for not containing aspartame, Asda is impliedly defaming the product (an earlier stage in this litigation was noted by the IPKat here).