Friday fantasies

When Chamberlain said "Peace in our time",
he was wrong -- but Prime Minister Cameron
has better prospects of success ...

The European Council's Conclusions today bring to an end the long and tortuous chapter on the European patent deal, embracing both the unitary patent system and the unified patent litigation scheme.  The position thus reached, notwithstanding this morning's saga of UK Prime Minister David Cameron's veto, is as follows:

Heads of State or Government of the participating Member States agreed on the solution for the last outstanding issue of the patents package, namely the seat of the Central Division of the Court of First Instance of the Unified Patent Court (UPC). That seat, along with the office of the President of the Court of First Instance, will be located in Paris. The first President of the Court of First Instance should come from the Member State hosting the central division. 

Given the highly specialised nature of patent litigation and the need to maintain high quality standards, thematic clusters will be created in two sections of the Central Division, one in London (chemistry, including pharmaceuticals, classification C, human necessities, classification A -- but don't forget, dear Parisians, that London gets to keep the Olympic Games, chortles Merpel), the other in Munich (mechanical engineering, classification F --a move welcomed by Merpel, who notes the recent success of London's Chelsea FC when playing in that lovely city). 

Concerning actions to be brought to the central division, it was agreed that parties will have the choice to bring an infringement action before the central division if the defendant is domiciled outside the European Union [is that the central division, ie Paris, London and Munich, or the central division of the central division, ie Paris?] Furthermore if a revocation action is already pending before the central division the patent holder should have the possibility to bring an infringement action to the central division [this sends the Kats rushing for their thesauruses in search of a word that means the opposite of 'bifurcation']. There will be no possibility for the defendant to request a transfer of an infringement case from a local division to the central division if the defendant is domiciled within the European Union. 

We suggest that Articles 6 to 8 of the Regulation implementing enhanced cooperation in the area of the creation of unitary patent protection to be adopted by the Council and the European Parliament be deleted [you're not the first to make this suggestion -- and let's hope that it never needs to be made again].

Annsley the AmeriKat, who has made this topic very much her own in sharing it with our readers, will be penning a magisterial epitaph on the whole saga in due course, so watch this space.

A great deal of the IPKat's incoming correspondence is what might be termed feline content -- performing cats, copycats, events and activities involving cats, missing cats, the naming of cats and so on.  Slightly embarrassed that he can't recall the kind benefactor whom he owes a katpat for this item, he gives you this item from the Daily Mail on "mockbusters", a term which appeals to him and with which he was not previously acquainted.  This phenomenon would appear to be most vulnerable to an action for passing off or unfair competition where unsuspecting consumers are lured into buying the cheap cover version of a classic, but trade mark protection is not generally available in respect of well-known public domain stories and characters.  

To enforce its "one cat per
family" policy, China built
this massive wall ...

The Great Wall of China. "China Customs: a wall to keep counterfeits in?" is the title of a atriking article in the Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice (JIPLP) by Matthew J. Elsmore and Aaron D. Hurvitz. Although this article is jointly written by an Englishman based in Denmark and an American based in China, it is emphatically not the equivalent of eating a smorgasbord with chopsticks.  It describes, analyses and evaluates the role and likely impact of using China trade mark and customs law and procedure in the fight against global trade in counterfeit Chinese-manufactured products. It's very counter-intuitive in many places and quite fun. You can read the abstract here.