Monday miscellany

This Kat dined tonight at Concert Noble, the impressive venue chosen by the Pharmaceutical Trade Marks Group for its Spring conference. Attending this event, he has been reminded how much can be learned from participating in sector-specific gatherings and listening to some well informed comments as to how trade marks in particular, and intellectual property rights as a whole, influence patterns of investment, research, development and consumption within the confines of the pharma and healthcare markets.  Though we have a one-size-fits-all trade mark law, we should be ever mindful that, while the essential and subsidiary functions of the trade mark remain constant, the role of the trade mark varies considerably across industries as diverse as pharmaceuticals, fashion, foodstuffs, the banking and professional services sectors and the sports and entertainment industries.

The IPKat's ever-industrious friend Enrico Bonadio has produced another paper which is available on SSRN here: it's "Stem Cells Industry and Beyond: What is the Aftermath of Brüstle?".  Published in the European Journal of Risk Regulation, Vol. 1, pp. 93-97, 2012, Enrico's article focuses on the ruling of the Court of Justice of the European Union in Case C-34/10 Brüstle v Greenpeace (noted here). Enrico asks whether this ruling might expose the EU and some of its Member States to a WTO challenge for failing to comply with Article 27(2) TRIPS as well as whether the decision may might be invoked to oppose the issuance, or challenge the validity, of any patent obtained through immoral or unlawful activities.

Around the weblogs. The 40th stage of Kingsley Egbuonu's A to Z marathon trek round official African IP websites for Afro-IP takes him to São Tomé and Príncipe -- where there aren't any. "Blogs to pay royalties for posting YouTube videos – Oh Dear!" is the title of Patricia Covarrubia's post on IP Tango about latest news from Brazil. IP Finance looks forward to further details of the UK's Patent Box..