Monday miscellany

Forthcoming events. Several new items have been added to the IPKat's Forthcoming Events list for 2015, including a little batch of IBIL events. Do check out this list when you get the chance. If you like secrets, " "Trade Secrets Protection & Enforcement: powering business growth by protecting your confidential data and know-how and enforcing against its misappropriation" might take your fancy. It's at the Pullman Brussels Midi Hotel, Belgium and there's a 10% registration fee discount for IPKat readers who quote the secret code, which you can find along with the other conference details here.

Holiday posts. The IPKat and Merpel remind readers that blogposts will continue to appear throughout the end-of-year holiday period, even at those very quiet times when it sometimes seems that the rest of the world has gone to sleep. This will, we hope, be welcome news for the thousand or so readers who click through for a little browse on Christmas Day. Do check us out from time to time!


Franchise Law: a suggestions for a good read? One of our readers has emailed with a request that this Kat has so far been unable to fulfil.  He is composing a book on franchising law in his own jurisdiction and writes:

"If you are so kind, please help me to find a good book about Franchising Law. I am investigating franchises but I can't find a good book, I hope you can recommend me some literature regarding this theme".

Preferably a book
on franchising
with pictures ...

This Kat hasn't spotted much on the subject of business format franchises since the last century, when he quite liked the late John Adams' Franchising: practice and precedents in business format franchising, but felt that it was really more of a book on applied commercial law than anything else and that there wasn't much IP in it since most disputes between business format franchisors and their franchisees seemed to go to arbitration rather than get to court, with the result that there weren't many juicy precedents. Also, law firms that advised clients in the establishment of franchises and subfranchises tended to keep their own precedents and templates pretty close to their chests.  He has also seen lots of "popular" books that are aimed at business folk who are thing of either setting up a franchise or buying into one --  but those are definitely not law books.  Be that as it  may, if anyone can recommend any good and recent (let's say 2000 onwards) books or articles on business format franchising, in any major language, can they please post details as comments below this blogpost?

Around the weblogs. Russian IP practitioner Sergey Zuykov narrates his firm's experience of getting a good result before his country's new Intellectual Property Rights Court in a case involving copyright in an unpatented design: it's all on Class 99 here.  Meanwhile, over on Class 99's sister blog Class 46, Christian Tenkhoff explains how Monster ran into trouble with their efforts to register the allusive term REHABILITATE as a Community trade mark for non-alcoholic beverages and nutritional supplements, among other things.  DDR Holdings v Hotels.com is a fascinating post-Alice case on US patent-eligibility, involving an invention directed towards merchandising on the internet: David Berry writes it up for PatLit here.


Difficult data question goes to Luxembourg. Case C-490/14 Verlag Esterbauer is a reference to the Court of Justice of the European Union for a preliminary ruling from the Bundesgerichtshof, Germany, on the following question:

In relation to the question of whether a collection of independent materials exists within the meaning of Art. 1(2) of Directive 96/9 on the legal protection of databases because the materials can be separated from one another without the value of their informative content being affected, is every conceivable informative value decisive, or only the value which is to be determined on the basis of the purpose of the collection and having regard to the resulting typical conduct of users?

If you think you know the answer, do tell us [come to think of it, says Merpel, if you think you know what the question means and what it's about, we'd like to hear from you too: she wonders it it's something about Esterbauer's Bikeline, or is it Bikini line ...]. In either event, if you would like to tell the UK Intellectual Property Office what you think, so it can decide whether the UK government should be making representations to Europe's top court, please email Arthur at policy@ipo.gov.uk by 23 December 2014. Please be assured: the contents of your communication will be so confidential that even you won't be able to find out what you said.