Wednesday whimsies

An earlier draft -- or the current one?

Those Unified Patent Court proposals simply will not go away.  A new Draft agreement on a Unified Patent Court and draft Statute - Revised Presidency text, Brussels, was published on 2 September 2011. József Tálas (Sar & Partners, Hungary) and Steve Peers (Professor of Law, University of Essex) both kindly drew the attention of this Kat to its existence, but he was too busy writing about the old version (see Kat rant here) to get to grips with the new one.  You can peruse it for yourself here. Changes to the text have been underlined and explained, which makes life a little easier since the document is still 77 pages long.  While we're on the subject, EPLaw President Jochen Pagenberg has drawn this Kat's attention to an excellent, sincerely meant and constructive critique of the draft agreement which you can view here on PatLit along with some strongly supportive text.

The IPKat is waiting for
the book of the video of
the draft

The Unitary Patent won't go away either. From Gérald Sédrati-Dinet comes a video presentation in which he goes thoroughly through the issues raised by the proposed legislation on the unitary patent, stressing how important it is to draw carefully a good patent policy, pointing at drawbacks of the Commission's proposal and proposing some required amendments in order for the unitary patent to emerge speedily and safely from the drawing board into the harsh reality of modern Europe. You can access the video, which is less than 15 minutes long, here, or download it on Ogg Theora/Vorbis Free format -- oreven browse the slides at your own pace. Gérald would appreciate viewers' comments, of course.

A Google search for 'maple leaf'
and 'polar bear' retrieved this
piece of artwork

Lack of transparency of Court of Justice of the European Union proceedings is another of the Kat's favourite topics (see eg IPKat threatens European and Judicial Serenity" here), in which context he is pleased to draw to the attention of readers an email from the ever-relevant Professor Norman Siebrasse, who writes:

"It appears that the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) is more serene than the CJEU, as all submissions are available online. Here is a link to the practice notice, here is a link to the SCC policy for access to records, and here is a link to the submissions in an upcoming copyright (fair dealing) case. Note that hearings are also webcast".

It's not as though the Court of Justice faces delicate political, social and economic issues while the SCC does not.  Perhaps we Europeans have some big lessons to learn from Canada about our institutions and how they relate to us.


Around the weblogs. Starting with PatLit, the robotic octopus saga of the PCC Pages has now entered its 39th episode, with further consideration of the conflict between privilege and documentary disclosure.  The Social Interface is in interesting contribution to the outer margins of IP/IT, being an interdisciplinary blog on the social implications of technology: it's driven by a team of Australians of whom two are in colour, the others in monochrome.  Emily Goodhand has produced a neat, punchy account of revolutionary developments at Princeton in the battle between academics and publishers for the heart and soul of the former's research product: you can read it on the 1709 Blog here.