From IP to NP. There's still time to book for next month's AIPPI Israel conference, "From IP to NP", which takes place at the Dan Panorama Conference Center, Tel-Aviv, on 10 and 11 November. There's a stellar cast of big names from around the world, gathering together to muse on the means of turning intellectual property into a business's net profits. Participants include leading lights in the judiciary in the form of
Randall R. Rader (USA) and
Klaus Grabinski (Germany), not to mention
David Kappo, Pravin Anand and
Marshall Phelps. Full details (of which there are many) can be found
here.
"Technology making law" is the name of an event taking place tomorrow in the European Parliament (PHS 1 C 047). This Kat's not sure whether this means it's in Strasbourg or Brussels but, wherever it is, it starts at 11:00 am and runs for two hours. The issues to be discussed relate to innovation on the internet, the difference between technology and law (!), "should technology make law or do legislators make law?", the consequences of the introduction of EME ('encrypted media extensions') in
HTML5 on the existing European legal framework for copyright and broadcasting and possible security problems with a "black box" in the browser. To participate, email Jan Loužek at
amelia.andersdotter-office2@ep.europa.eu. Jan will order the badges for you to enter the parliament building. The event will additionally be streamed and recorded and its availability will be notified at the
@exile6e twitter account.
In order to get to the parliament you need to provide following information: Full name, your ID number and your date of birth. The registration will be still available today (to cca. 14:00-15:00) so that the security will have some time to make the badges ready.
Coming up on 8 November is the 22nd Annual IPLJ Symposium, hosted by the
Fordham Intellectual Property, Media & Entertainment Law Journal (or IPLJ, for those who like slightly abbreviated acronyms) and the Fordham Intellectual Property Law Institute. The day's programme is a busy one, as you can see from the event's webpage
here, with several of the IPKat's friends taking part. According to the organisers,
"Academics, practitioners and government officials will present and discuss their views. There will be ample time for questions and contributions from the audience. This is a great opportunity to catch up with the latest developments, hear interesting insights and meet old friends and make new ones".
Even if that doesn't appeal to you, it's bound to be fun!
Monty Hyams. It was with sadness that this Kat learned via Chris Torrero of the recent death of Monty Hyams. While there may be few people active in the IP field who remember him today, he is very much part of the history of intellectual property. Way back in the 1940s Monty appreciated that there was an unmet need for information concerning patents, and particularly families of patents, and he set to work in providing a means by which such information could be easily and reliably accessed by anyone searching for that information. This need was met by the founding of Derwent Information, later sold to what is now the Thomson Reuters empire and eventually repackaged as the Derwent World Patent Index. Glimpses of Monty's career can be seen
here and
here. This Kat had two meetings with Monty back in 1987, shortly after the launch of
Patent World magazine, an event of which Monty took watchful note before deciding that the provision of information concerning patent law was an altogether less profitable business than that of trading in information concerning patents themselves.
Around the weblogs. First up is the
Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice's jiplp weblog, which
proudly announces the content of its November 2013 issue and gives away, absolutely free and at no cost (other than that of the time spent reading it), the
guest editorial from Marius Schneider calling for a pan-African IP practitioners' organisation. There are also two significant posts from IP Finance's Mike Mireles: one on the
under-reporting of royalties and what can or should be done about it, the other on prospects for the biosimilars industry in California, following a
gubernatorial veto of a controversial bill. SOLO IP
speculates on why there's not more enthusiastic support for webinar training. Finally, former guest Kat Stefano Barazza, now on PatLit, has posted an excellent piece on the
problems facing judges when they have to deal with FRAND royalty calculations in the US.
Road Humps and Sidewalks. Earlier this year the IPKat published a review by Caroline Ncube of
Road Humps and Sidewalks: the Path Less Travelled by our esteemed colleague Dr Kalyan C Kanakanala. The IPKat has since learned that this book now has a new cover. Further details of this intellectual property-based thriller, which also touches on public policy issues involving the pharmaceutical sector, can be found on Caroline's original review, which you can read for yourself
here.
Reviewed by Jeremy
on
Monday, October 14, 2013
Rating:
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Ah, Jeremy, Monty Hyams! Yes, indeed, "few people" remember him, and most will not be readers of IPKat. The reason is that he addressed patent information specialists, and only in smaller companies were they also the patent law practising individual. Singular! I was the head and single patent professional in what were locally considered large companies at the time (both companies long bought up by larger corporations with 25+ patent professionals).
ReplyDeleteDuring the annual Derwent User Meetings that invariably had both a very highly professional technical content and a social content, we learnt both how colleagues (in size) fared and how it was done in large corporations. It brought invaluable contacts to visit when "in the area".
The meetings were wisely placed in off-season holiday resorts in the UK (those that I attended), and we invariably had an inspiring talk by Monty.
However, I cannot quite agree that he was the first "patent family" definer; there may have been simultaneous invention at least. Just after WW2 (the Second World War to some of you) Otto Ring, the long-time head of the Danish Radio Industry's Patent Association started using a "priority file" (with the priority document(s) defining the father of the "family") to track the fate of parallel applications and to note prior art in the various jurisdictions against them. This material was used in systematic oppositions against any non-Danish laid-out application that could disturb the local industry. For an industry that counted more than 20 individual factories it was a rational way to approach the problems, and a dedicated laboratory created technical solutions that circumvented any remaining patents. This way royalty rates were held down in Denmark if it was decided to use the foreign patents anyway. This association was active from 1940-1978.
Thank you for bringing back these memories although the occasion is sad!
George Brock-Nannestad