Wednesday whimsies I

Dogs, bears -- and cats: a word from the Wyse. The IPKat raised this question on Monday when considering the relative positions of PUDSEY BEAR (already registered in the UK) and Pudsey the dancing dog (for which a claim to trade mark protection has been asserted). He has now received the following considered response from Dr Joseph I. Wyse (a patent attorney and partner in the firm of Dr. Eyal Bressler Ltd). Says Doctor Joe:

"Dogs and bears are conceptually similar to someone or something, although the degree of relatedness is a vexing taxonomical question. Wiki Answers puts the case most succinctly:   

"Dogs & bears are in the same order, Carnivora, but different families (dog is Canidae, bear is Ursidae). According to this classification dogs & bears are no more related to each other than each is to cats (order Carnivora, family Felidae). 

Some taxonomists classify creatures into intermediate classifications, such as "suborders" & "suprafamilies" & such. According to some, the order Carnivora contains the suborder Feliformia (cat-like) & Caniformia. Suborder Caniformia contains the family Canidae & the infraorder Arctoidae. Infraorder Arctoide contains the superfamily Ursoidae, which contains the family Ursidae (bears) & the extinct bear-like family Hemicyonidae. All of this is trying to say that bears & dogs are more closely related to each other than to cats, but not quite in the same family". 

I'll leave it to the trade mark experts to say whether this helps us answer whether PUDSEY and PUDSEY BEAR can cohabit on the register, but it's zoologically interesting at any rate. You can read more here".

Around the weblogs. Australian lawyer Bruce Arnold's Barnold Law is not a specifically IP-dedicated weblog, but it has a good deal of IP content -- reflecting the author's broad range of interests.  Ron Coleman's Likelihood of Confusion carries this powerful piece, "INTA and the big tent", which is nothing to do with the venue for this year's Meeting but everything to do with how the debate on trade marks and keyword advertising is conducted.  Eleonora Rosati, on the 1709 Blog, writes on how The Pirate Bay is taking its case to the European Court of Human Rights.  Meanwhile, over on the jiplp weblog, Volkswagens are very much in evidence: Chris Pett writes on VW's continued if unsurprising failure to secure Community trade mark protection for GTi, while Sally Cooper alludes to the BEETLE when writing on the registrability of BEATLE for wheelchairs.

New CRIDs on the block.  Amélie de Francquen has written to tell the Kats that she is a researcher at CRIDS (the Centre for Research, Information, Law and Society) of the University of Namur. CRIDS has organised a conference on AdWords and domain names in Brussels on 25 May. As she explains,

"The objective of this day is to reflect on the opportunities and the risks for companies in relation to the use of trade marks on the internet and of domain names".

If you'd like to join Amélie and her friends, you can find all the relevant details by clicking here.

Call for papers.  The Online Journal of Public Interest IP invites all IP professionals to submit papers for its next edition, which plans to focus on "Food, Climate Change and Intellectual Property: Defining the Issue."  The deadline for submissions is 30 June 2012. According to the notice, "The journal is a repository of peer-reviewed knowledge from thought leaders around the world". But don't for one moment let that put you off.  If you want more information, or just enjoy corresponding with Journal Managers, your point of contact is Emilie van den Berkhof [Merpel wants to know, if it's an online journal, what does it want with papers?].


Some animals are more EQE than others ...(with apologies to George Orwell). The Kats' friend Brian Stevens tells them that the European Patent Office (EPO) has released the results of the Pre-examination of the European qualifying examination (EQE) [notice to ordinary folk: that's what it's called -- the results of the Pre-examination. No kidding] on their website here. Armed with only a couple of calculators and a pocket full of slide rules, Brian has kindly given us some further information. He writes:

"Prospective patent attorneys sat this four-hour machine-marked multi-choice assessment of their ability to answer questions relating to the drafting of claims and legal matters for the first time on 5 March this year. It seems that almost as many people received full marks as failed (four out of 390 versus five) and about 99% of sitters passed. I have not heard of an examination on any subject with a higher pass rate. The aim of this hurdle was to reduce the number of badly prepared candidates sitting (and re-sitting) the full EQE and this may have achieved by ensuring that sitters give some thought to the subject a year earlier than they would otherwise. However, the figures seem to suggest that the bar has not been set very high at all. Looking at it another way, perhaps we finally have a cohort of trainees who are as smart as they think they are" [Says Merpel, if they were so smart, why would they enter a profession that required so much gruelling training and rigorous examinations, ultimately followed by a lifetime having to deal with (i) EPO examiners and (ii) clients?].