Friday fantasies

Writing client-facing material using English as a second language? Katfriend Clodagh Phelan (Words with Wings), who has a love of literacy and a legal education, is offering a handy service for those members of the intellectual property fraternity who write newsletters, circulars, web content and suchlike in English even though it may be their second or third language.  Clodagh will give your text a professional "health-check".  If you'd like to contact Clodagh and discuss this topic with her, you can do so by emailing her here.  Says this Kat, this sort of service can be just as beneficial to people who are native English-speakers but who -- unlike their foreign counterparts -- have often had little or no chance to learn the rules. Having received some hard-to-understand missives of late from firms whose representatives he met at last month's INTA Meeting, he finds it difficult to understand why no-one took Clodagh up and made use of her services.

Good news for those patent folk who have been diligently following (or attempting to follow) the thread of comments that followed the guest post by Walter Hart and Reiner Wijnstra (EP&C) on Poisonous Divisionals. Walter and Reinier have promised a follow-up that summarises the vast quantity of comments and asks where we go from here.  Be patient, though: it will take them a little while to read them all! [If you want some handy tips on how to speed-read all those comments, try the Wired How-To Wiki, here]


In case you missed it, Eli Lilly and Company v Human Genome Sciences, Inc UKSC 2012/0220 is not going on appeal to the United Kingdom's Supreme Court.  Last month a three-judge panel consisting of Lords Neuberger, Reed and Carnwath refused leave to appeal, stating:

"Permission to appeal be refused because the application does not raise an arguable point of law of general public importance which ought to be considered by the Supreme Court at this time bearing in mind that the case has already been the subject of judicial decision and reviewed on appeal".

These two parties, readers may recall, have faced each other in the Supreme Court not long ago: see Katposts by Jeremy and Matt.

Katfriend Jane Cornwell wonders if it might be possible for the IPKat to post news of a Teaching Fellowship in Intellectual Property which has just been advertised up in Bonnie Scotland, in Edinburgh to be precise.  Details can be found if you click here and then look for vacancy ref. 015044.  The closing date for applications is 11 July 2013. As the advertisement explains, teaching needs exist in particular in the areas of international intellectual property law and the enforcement and management of IP. The person appointed will also have the opportunity to develop specialist teaching in an area informed by his or her own research interests and expertise. If you apply, good luck -- and don't forget to say the Kat sent you!

Teething problems.  Another Katfriend, the excellent Claire Lazenby, read with interest Monday's Katpost on a sudden apparent change for the worst in terms of the availability of information on the UK Intellectual Property Office (IPO) website ("Security interests in trade marks: has something gone awry?", here). On this topic Claire adds:

It might be worth mentioning that registrable transactions are not the only thing which the new-look database of the UKIPO has obscured.  Notifications – ie, when a TM application has been allowed to proceed through to publication for opposition purposes only on notification to the owner of an earlier right – have also disappeared. And the notification letters which the UKIPO sends out to the earlier right holders are not copied to the applicants. The lack of easily accessible data on notifications does have an impact on the statutory duty of acquiescence, and it also leads to a false sense of security, especially among applicants who try to do without legal representatives: they assume – because there is no permanent easily accessible record  - that the UKIPO has notified their application to all of the owners of the marks the UKIPO found in its search. And they assume that the absence of any oppositions means that they are in the clear as far as conflicts are concerned – only to find after they have launched on the market that those earlier rights are indeed a problem.

Claire wonders what other similar issues readers of this weblog can point to.  Meanwhile, the good news is that all is not lost. The IPO's Lynda Adams, in a post responding to the earlier blog which readers may have missed, writes: 

"We are currently in the process of resolving a number a teething problems resulting from the significant IT and business change that the UK Trade Mark Registry has recently undertaken. The missing security details should be available on line in the next week or so. Please accept our apologies for this temporary inconvenience".

Thank you, Lynda!  While this Kat has little sympathy for bureaucratic muddles and fuddles, he has every sympathy for teething problems since he is currently in the middle of a bout of root canal treatment.  But, what need, he wonders, does the IPO have for teeth?