Friday Fantasia

IP Crime Report 2013/14  UK IP Minister, Baroness Neville-Rolfe, has just released the IP Crime Report 2013/14, which the UK Intellectual Property Office prepared on behalf of the IP Crime Unit. As fans of all things IP and crime will know already, this document sets out the most recent developments in IP crime and enforcement activity. These include the creation and impact of a specialist police unit, The City of London’s Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU, the first unit of its kind in the world), which has already investigated more than £28 million worth of IP crime and suspended more than 2,000 co.uk domain names in its first year. The impact of PIPCU has been mirrored by increasing levels of industry intervention, including 72 million instances of infringing digital content removed by the UK Music industry (BPI) and more than 1.6 million links to books which infringe copyright taken down by the Publishers Association (PA).

UPC IT e-Filing available to test  On the patent side of the IP world (a place where this Kat does not venture too often), the news is that the UPC taskforce has selected a supplier to provide a prototype e-filing and case management system. The purpose of the prototype is to test the viability of a cloud-based, off-the-shelf, configured system for the UPC, where data is stored by a supplier and can be accessed securely from any location. This will help inform the tender process. The prototype e-filing/case management system is now available to test here. To provide useful feedback, testers should allow between 30 minutes and 2 hours. Testers can supply feedback using the 'BugHerd' feedback application using the button at the bottom right-hand of the screen (this allows you to click on and highlight certain parts of the prototype, such as fields in forms, and write notes about them).

Hargreaves warning  On a slightly more familiar ground, ie new UK copyright exceptions, the news is that Prof Ian Hargreaves of the Hargreaves Report has warned [or rather 'threatened', wonders Merpel] rightholders against suing over the new provisions for private copying and parody [here] in the Copyright Designs and Patents Act, 1988. The reason? "Case law may be developed that give a wider meaning to exceptions than rights holders had argued for or which is contained in the wording of the new regulations", reports Out-Law.

Around the weblogs  On The 1709 Blog, Ben reports on some copyright-related news from Nigeria, while on PatLit Micheal informs us that one should avoid messing up with the Technical Board of Appeal after a certain hour of the day, and finally on Class46 Jeremy publicises an event for international trade mark aficionados.