In case you hadn't noticed .. some fresh book notices

Those IP publications just keep coming out, and here's a selection of some of the more recent titles to have come across the IPKat's path.

Keeping Secrets: a Practical Introduction to Trade Secret Law and Strategy, is an attractively produced and agreeably slim volume by Darin W. Snyder and David S. Almeling, published somewhat earlier this year by the New York desk of Oxford University Press. Both authors are practising attorneys, being respectively a partner and of counsel to O'Melveny & Myers LLP.  According to the publishers,

"Trade secrets - stealing them, protecting them, enforcing them - are increasingly big business. To understand why, consider any information you know about your job that you're supposed to keep confidential. That information may qualify as a trade secret. Trade secrets concern everyone; from the engineer who invents a better mousetrap to the marketer who knows pre-release prices; from the CEO who drafts the company's five-year plan to the HR rep who manages the organizational chart, and so on [This is encouraging: too many introductory works assume to great a degree of knowledge on the part of their reader -- this one doesn't].

Keeping Secrets: a Practical Introduction to Trade Secret Law and Strategy is an accessible primer on all things trade secret. It examines the audacious schemes of trade secret thieves by presenting dozens of case studies and the lessons to learn from them [one of which is that you can probably make a good deal more money stealing trade secrets than practising as an attorney]. It also offers best practices for protecting trade secrets from theft, investigating a suspected breach, and enforcing a trade secret in court and other forums".

Bibliographic details. ISBN 978-0-19-979743. Paperback. xix + 149 pages [but you get a lot of words per page since the print is small and the margins are even smaller]. Price: £45. Rupture factor: non-existent. Web page here.

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Private International Law and the Internet (2nd edition), by Dan Jerker B. Svantesson, is another blockbuster from the Wolters Kluwer Law & Business imprint.  It is now five years since the emergence of the first edition, which the IPKat welcomed here, and it is to the author's credit that the second edition is only 25% longer if one considers the explosion of interest in the subject since 2007. So what do the publishers have to say about the new edition? Their web blurb runs like this:

"In this, the second edition of Private International Law and the Internet, Dan Svantesson takes a fresh and original approach to what is perhaps the most crucial current issue in private international law; that is, how the Internet affects and is affected by the four fundamental questions: When should a lawsuit be entertained by the courts? Which state’s law should be applied? When should a court that can entertain a lawsuit decline to do so? And will a judgment rendered in one country be recognized and enforced in another? ...

A wide survey of private international law solutions encompasses insightful analyses of relevant laws adopted in a variety of countries including Australia, England, Hong Kong, the United States, Germany, Sweden, and China as well as in a range of international instruments. There is also a chapter on advances in geo-identification technology and its special value for legal practice [a feature which the Kat applauded in the first edition]. The book concludes with two model international conventions, one on cross-border defamation and one on cross-border contracts; as well as a set of practical check-lists to guide legal practitioners faced with cross-border matters within the discussed fields ...".

The Kat is pleased that this book has been brought up to date, since it is a worthy one but not a title that many IP litigators seem to have come across -- possibly because so little of it is specifically dedicated to IP issues (copyright gets quite a generous look-in, but the private international law issues involving, for example, keywords, could have been given star billing). He wishes the second edition well.

Bibliographic details.  ISBN: 9789041134165. List Price $176. Hardcover: xx + 557 pages. Rupture factor: considerable. Web page here.

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Business Method and Software Patents: A Practical Guide, by Morgan D. Rosenberg and Richard J. Apley, is another offering from Oxford University Press's New York desk. Morgan D. Rosenberg runs the Middle East Operations at Litman Law Offices in Manassas, VA [the IPKat had never really thought of Virginia as being in the Middle East but, in terms of US geography, there is no state of the Union that has a better claim than Virginia to be described as 'Middle East'], while Richard J. Apley, Chief Patent Officer at Litman Law Offices, is a former Supervisory Patent Examiner and a Director of the Office of Independent Inventor Programs.

This book is clearly flavoured, if not actually motivated, by the celebrated litigation leading to the US Supreme Court ruling in Bilski v Kappos which, this Kat considers, did not after all change the face of the world. But let the publishers have their say on what this title is all about:

"In its 2010 decision in Bilski v Kappos, the U.S. Supreme Court redefined patentable subject matter for business methods and computer software, but did so without imposing definitive tests and definitions, effectively leaving such guidance for future court decisions and the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). As a result, the law is essentially being written at present, and will continue to be written and narrowed over the next decade [But was this not always thus? Bilski v Kappos has not so much created uncertainty as shifted it from one place to another ...].

Business Method and Software Patents addresses the drafting of business-method and software patents in the wake of Bilski v Kappos. Morgan Rosenberg and Richard Apley offer a review and analysis of all relevant case law and guidelines presented by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). With the use of actual patents filed by the authors, this work provides practical information and guidance on the drafting of successful patent applications".

The authors have actually done quite a neat job here. While the bulk of the text consists of the patent applications themselves, which range from the nearly intelligible to the hieroglyphic, the bits that are written in English for the attention of lawyers are lucid and helpful. If the authors are right that "the law is essentially being written at present, and will continue to be written and narrowed over the next decade", we can expect a second edition fairly soon.

Bibliographic details. ISBN 978-0-19-990791-5. Price: £110. Paperback.xi + 526 pages. Rupture factor: low. Web page here.

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Intellectual Property Rights Infringement and Remedies, by Ananth Padmanabhan, is published out of India by LexisNexis/ Butterworths Wadhwa Nagpur. The author, a Madras practitioner, appears to have a lively litigation-based general intellectual property practice as well as an academic profile. He has kindly sent the IPKat an electronic version of the text which may take some time to read and digest, so this note is posted, sight unseen, so that prospective readers and purchasers of this volume can be alerted to its existence while it is still current.

Regarding this title, the publishers give the following information:

"Intellectual Property Rights: Infringement and Remedies is a comprehensive work that discusses the entire gamut of Intellectual Property Rights using the standpoint of infringement of these rights, and the remedies available therefor. There are four important aspects relating to trade marks, patents, copyright, designs and the common law protection for trade secrets, confidential information and character merchandising that this book addresses. These are: (1) the scope of the right in question; (2) the manner in which it is violated; (3) the defences available against allegation of such violation; and (4) the remedies to tackle such violation. This book analyses each of these aspects in a structured fashion, laying emphasis on the principles governing them. 

The book is first of its kind to discuss extensively the possible ramifications of, and interpretive issues arising from, the Copyright (Amendment) Act, 2012. In particular, the book addresses issues arising from the newly created ‘remunerative right’ to receive royalties and the prohibition on assignment of such rights, introduced for the sake of protecting the interests of music composers and lyricists. It also addresses the scope and ambit of the new fair use exceptions introduced by the Amendment to benefit intermediaries, file-sharing sites and non-commercial public libraries. This book is a useful companion for legal practitioners as it addresses issues in both substantive and procedural legal domain".

This book has already been warmly reviewed in India on Spicy IP by Prashant Reddy here and on the IndiaCorpLaw weblog by V. Niranjan here. 

Bibliographic details. ISBN: 9788180387937. Hard Cover. Price: INR 1195 or US$ 59.75. Rupture factor currently unknown.  Web page here.