Wednesday whimsies

Bye bye Trevor -- and good luck!  This Kat has had to say a few sad farewells over the years, when friends and colleagues have passed to what he hopes is a better world than this one.  However not all farewells are sad, as the following note (kindly provided by Katfriend Justin Watts) records:

Bird & Bird hosted an AIPPI UK event on Monday night: a tribute to their recently-retired president Trevor Cook. With Trevor moving to New York in the New Year, the event acquired additional significance, though Trevor made it clear that we have not seen the last of him yet!

Trevor Cook

Over a hundred of Trevor's IP friends from other London firms, in-house lawyers, the judiciary, the bar, patent and trade mark attorneys and academia joined his colleagues at Bird & Bird for a surprise party paying tribute to his long service to the profession.  In a series of short speeches, Lord Justice Floyd noted Trevor's enormous contribution to the published literature, Professor Adrian Sterling compared Trevor favourably to Alexander the Great in his willingness to seek new (IP) worlds to conquer, Morag Macdonald paid tribute to his mentorship and Gregor Grant to his legendary tenacity, Simon Thorley commenting that being instructed by Trevor was a dream of sorts.

There are few figures in the IP world that inspire the same affection as Trevor. He has mentored a generation both within Bird & Bird and outside. He has a long track record of limitless enthusiasm for IP, prolific authorship, and a tireless and inspiring guidance. We wish him well as he embarks on a new episode.

This Kat wishes Trevor well in his new adventures. He has encountered few people in the IP community who have given so freely of their time, their expertise, their patience and their commitment for the good of IP as a whole.  Merpel, putting aside for a moment all her wonderful witticisms combining the words 'cook' and 'bird', hopes that his new colleagues at WilmerHale will waste no time in replacing the photo of Trevor on their website with one that makes him look a little less perplexed.

Around the weblogs. Both Laetitia on Class 46 and the Berlaymonster make something of a naughty German word that features prominently in a Community trade mark application, illustrated on the left, which the General Court has squashed [Merpel notes: to spare the blushes of the Brits, this decision has not been translated into English].  Over on SOLO IP, the irrepressible Michael Factor writes about solo patent attorneys who write their own patent applications and seek to crowd-source their own finance, here.  The Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice's jiplp weblog proudly lists the contents of its December issue, here.  The European Observatory's Enforcement Database is now up-and-running: Class 46 reports on it here and the happy news that it's open to owners of designs as well as trade marks, despite initial publicity to the contrary, is mentioned on sister blog Class 99.  In the wonderful world of copyright, Gill Grassie's note on the problems of trying to enforce a contractual undertaking not to infringe when the act in question isn't an infringement graces the 1709 Blog here. Finally IP Draughts carries an unusually long and analytical piece which opens with the gripping words "How much time should you spend in negotiating the law and jurisdiction clause in a confidentiality agreement (CDA)?"

Is nothing sacred? 3D
cat printed by DO Bots

The IPKat's friends in the UK Intellectual Property Office (UKIPO) have been doing some sterling work on 3D printing.  While they are only just kicking off their research in this exciting area, they've got lots of bits and pieces on the boil.  Much of the UKIPO's thinking on the subject is available in its regrettably two-dimensional report, 3D Printing: a Patent Overview, which you can access here. It's 48 pages long, written in order to be swiftly understood, and handsomely and helpfully equipped with tables and other visual aids. In short:

* The report provides a detailed analysis of the global patent landscape, with more than 9,000 individual patents published since 1980 (a little over 4,000 patent families).  The US, as might be imagined, is the leading country in terms of numbers of patents, while Fujitsu is the leading assignee, holding more than 90 published patents [says the IPKat, this suggests that the industry is remarkably fragmented, which in turn suggests that standards-essential patents may be still a long way off].

* The UK is in the top ten of countries by volume of patents and performs better in terms of the location of the inventor rather than as a location for filing of the application [which means precisely what ...?].

* The report also considers other key areas, such as collaboration within the market, citations, and a breakdown of technology areas covered by '3D printing' patents.

* IPO is currently running a research project to look at the IP implications and challenges as 3D printing becomes more common, across patents, trade marks, designs and copyright. Research has been commissioned and is expected to be published April next year.

* Later this week there is an 'Additive Manufacturing Summit' at London Excel, where the IPO be participating in a workshop on IP and cyber-security. Details are available here.