Wednesday whimsies

Fingered.  Last week, in "Coming to their Sensis: of Aussies, scams and the Yellow Peril", the IPKat featured a report on a successful, if stressful, attempt to drive a scammer off a URL which it should not have been occupying. He now thanks Nadine Courmadias (Legal Counsel, Sensis Pty Ltd) for telling him about the fake yellow page scammer's "inverted fingers" logo (reproduced, left).  The Kat wonders if the new generation of Yellow Pages customers knows why there are any fingers in its logo at all; he seems to recall a slogan, from the distant past when we all used paper products, "Let your fingers do the walking".

Not on your Nellie? Never on a Monday! In "Search Yahoo! for Elly? Not on your Nellie" the IPKat reported on a dramatic decision from the Tribunale di Roma that an internet service provider could be a contributory copyright infringer where the use of its search engine led users to sites that provided infringing versions of the movie they were seeking. It now seems that the real drama wasn't in the courtroom but in the newspaper reports. As Gaetano Dimita explains: "I finally got my hands to a copy of the Yahoo! case. I found it on Interlex.it, here.  The Italian newspaper reports were inaccurate. The action was a 'procedimento cautelare' (I think the proper translation is 'procedure for interlocutory remedies' or 'preliminary or summary judgment), not a full decision. No further reasoning will be produced. The judge, assessing the 'fumus boni juri' and the 'periculum in mora', ordered Yahoo! to remove the links to infringing websites. Yahoo! did have knowledge of the infringement as a result of notices sent by the plaintiff (PFA Film srl) and, since it did not activate its take-down procedure, it became liable. However, Google Italia and Microsoft (also parties in the proceedings) where not found liable since they did not administer their search engines directly and they were entitled to their costs".

Latest news on the battle between Louis Vuitton and Nadia Plesner (see earlier IPKat post,"Iconic IP and freedom of expression: the battle lies ahead", here, and Poll on the IPKat's side-bar), comes from Jens van den Brink (Kennedy Van der Laan), who acts for Ms Plesner. There will be a second hearing on the challenge to the appointment of the judge on 4 April, to enable the judge to react to additional grounds for the challenge. Also, a new hearing date for the injunction proceedings has been set: it's 20 April at 14:00 hours, in The Hague court.

Around the blogs.  Congratulations are due to the IP Finance weblog which, founded in January 2008, has now notched up its 900th email subscriber.  PatLit's 22nd PCC Page, "IPOff tells Cautious: “Get knotted"", can be found here, continuing the saga of cut-price, sawn-off litigation in the Patents County Court for England and Wales.  MARQUES Class 46 reports that there are still three or four places available on the "Future Plans" seminar on trade marks in Europe next week.

Casting for a star role
in the Opposition Division ...

Movie buffs take note! A YouTube video which a group of Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market (OHIM) staff developed in order to explain the benefits of Community trade mark protection to a general audience. The project was supported by OHIM's multimedia team, but the script was developed and "acted" by volunteers drawn from various OHIM departments.  Further information is available from OHIM here.  You can also view the movie here.