Monday miscellany

There's nothing like a little
scrutiny to focus one's attention ...

The European Scrutiny Committee of the British House of Commons has been following discussions on the proposal to set up a unified patent court in Europe [as has the IPKat: see posts here, here and a multitude of earlier posts], and has reported its concerns and those of stakeholder associations to the House through its Reports on 9 November and 7 December 2011. The Committee will hold two evidence sessions. The first will explore the concerns of patent lawyers in the UK and Europe with the proposed court. The second will ask the Government to explain its policy on the proposed court, and to answer the concerns of the proposed courts’ many critics. The agenda for the two sessions looks like this (those giving evidence are named in brackets):

* Wednesday 25 January, 2.30pm (Tim Roberts, President, and Vicki Salmon, Chair, Litigation Committee, Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys; Henry Carr QC, Chair, Intellectual Property Bar Association); 3.30pm (Dr Christian Gassauer-Fleissner, Chairman of European Patents Lawyers Association -- EPLAW) 

* Wednesday 1 February, 2.30pm (Baroness Wilcox, Parliamentary Secretary, and officials, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills).

These sessions, which will be held in a Committee Room at the House of Commons, are open to the public. If you can't be bothered to go through the elaborate security rituals that are a prerequisite for entering the building, or doubt that you can restrain yourself from making unsolicited interventions, the preferable course is to enjoy the whole thing through the live streaming facility which you can access by clicking here.

Since the Scrutiny Committee has been on live
Parliamentary TV, it was found necessary to
introduce new ways of evaluating evidence ...

Who is actually on the Scrutiny Committee? The line-up is as follows: William Cash (Chairman), (Stone), Conservative; James Clappison (Hertsmere), Conservative; Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk), Labour; Jim Dobbin (Heywood and Middleton), Labour; Julie Elliott (Sunderland Central), Labour; Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale), Liberal Democrat; Nia Griffith (Llanelli), Labour; Chris Heaton-Harris (Daventry), Conservative; Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North), Labour; Chris Kelly (Dudley South), Conservative; Tony Lloyd (Manchester Central), Labour; Penny Mordaunt (Portsmouth North), Conservative; Stephen Phillips (Sleaford and North Hykeham); Jacob Rees-Mogg (Somerset North East), Conservative; Henry Smith (Crawley), Conservative; Ian Swales (Redcar), Liberal Democrat.  The IPKat is sure that, with one member called Cash and another named Penny, this Committee will be highly sensitive to the potentially financial implications of the proposed Euro-legislation.  Merpel's just pleased to see a Mogg on board ...

Not all vultures are, or want
to be, extra-virgin ...

Calling all Vulture Growers.  For the average Englishman, the word "vulture" has a fairly pejorative meaning.  The vulture is a bird of prey that feeds on carrion. And colloquially, as this Kat's trusty Collins English Dictionary puts it, a vulture is a "person or thing that preys greedily  and ruthlessly on others, especially the helpless".  The word VULTURE does make it on to the UK trade mark register, in Class 12, for "motor road vehicles, all for use in the handling and transporting of refuse, scrap, waste and of the like materials; parts and fittings included in Class 12 for all the aforesaid goods", as well as for music and art magazines (a "culture vulture being a person who greedily consumes culture).  Today this Kat has just learned that the word VULTURE -- presumably as a trisyllabic word -- has now been accorded  protected designation of origin status for extra-virgin olive oil from Italy. From Agricoltura Italiana Online he discovers it has " ... a unique taste quality, that distinguish it from other oils, demonstrated by historical documentation and in particular due to age-old commitment of the Vulture growers who were able to link this production to the particular climatic conditions of the production area".

Around the weblogs. Kingsley Egbuonu is now on the 32nd country of his A to Z tour of African official IP websites for Afro-IP -- and he has still only got to 'M' for Mauritania. There are plenty more countries to visit -- and the likelihood of plenty more depressing news to come for anyone who thinks they can easily contact national IP offices in Africa and access current information online.  Class 46 asks here why generic drugs have such tongue-twisting names. Over on the 1709 Blog, Eleonora Rosati reports on Mario Monti's plan to solve Italy's economic problems by (inter alia) making copyright collecting societies more competitive, while her colleague Jeremy ponders over the rights and wrongs of the recent Red Bus photo case.  Finally, Chris Wadlow demonstrates that he has few if any peers when it comes to writing enjoyable book reviews when, on the jiplp weblog, he reviews two new titles in one go, here.