Wednesday whimsies

Katfriend and academic Enrico Bonadio tells us that he is organising another copyright-related seminar, to be held at City Law School (City University London) on Wednesday 6 May 2015, College Building, Room A110. The speaker is Jonathan Griffiths (Queen Mary University) and the title of his talk is "Parody and copyright in EU copyright law". If you are planning to attend, just click here for details.  Merpel wonders how many times the name Deckmyn will be heard in the course of the seminar ...

Holborn-based law firm Collyer Bristow, one of the nearest IP practices to The Old Nick, is holding a debate on 28 April 2015 at 6:00 pm for 6:30 pm. The Motion is “This House believes that there is no sanction for unreasonable behaviour in the IPEC [this being the Intellectual Property Enterprise Court, England and Wales, which has also become something of a judicial laboratory in which new ideas can be tested out]”. The debate, which features solicitors from the firm plus real live barristers, will be chaired by Michael Fysh QC SC at the Collyer Bristow Gallery, 4 Bedford Row, London, WC1R 4TF. Seating is limited, so please reply as soon as possible to events@collyerbristow.com if you're hoping to attend.

This year marks the 10th annual conference on European Policy for Intellectual Property (EPIP), which is reputed to be a relatively IP-friendly event, considering that it attracts economists.  With the theme of " IP in the Creative Economy", this peer-reviewed conference gives you a chance to participate as well as to sit back and enjoy the banter, with submissions of papers and suggestions for themed sessions welcomed even now (the deadline for submissions is 20 May and you should know the fate of your suggestion by 8 June).  The conference itself takes place on 2 and 3 September 2015 at the University of Glasgow, Scotland, and there are loads and loads of details here.

"Why IP Matters: Who owns the Arts and Sciences?" is the question posed by the title of a fascinating interdisciplinary conference that is coming up down towards the bottom left corner of the British Isles in the lovely and ancient city of Exeter.  It's being held under the auspices of The Network of Young Academics and Practitioners in Intellectual Property Law (New IP Lawyers for short: details here) on 22 and 23 June 2015 at the University of Exeter. According to the organisers' blurb, "This inaugural event will be focusing on the role and impact Intellectual Property Laws have had in the Arts and Sciences including their respective industries".  Keynote addresses are being given by fellow Kat and copyright scholar Eleonora, as well as Lionel Bently, Charlotte Waelde, Graeme Dinwoodie and Elif Shafak (TBC) as keynotes for the event. For further details, just click here.

On Monday this Kat made mention of a recent OHIM Board of Appeal ruling regarding non-use of the WEBSHIPPING Community trade mark and whether the fact that an alleged infringer was carrying on using your mark even after a court had ordered it to stop was a proper reason for non-use.  Well, following that blogpost, this Kat received a neat note from Katfriend and experienced trade mark attorney Claire Lazenby who told him this:

"I had a client who owned the CTM registration of ITSFRIDAY for a website guide to cultural and entertainment events. The Daily Mail had been using IT’S FRIDAY as the name for its review section in its newpaper for some time, and the paper then applied for a UK registration of IT’S FRIDAY which my client opposed on the basis of his CTM. My client, who was a cautious man, did not wish to enter the UK market with his CTM mark until such time as he had succeeded in getting a refusal of the newspaper’s UK application. When the applicant for the IT’S FRIDAY UK application then applied to revoke my client’s CTM registration on grounds of non-use, OHIM did not accept that my client’s caution was a proper reason for non-use [in the end my client won the opposition in the UK, he then launched his business, and got a fresh CTM to take the place of the one which the Daily Mail had revoked, but then, very sadly, he died only a year or so after his launch]. A copy of the OHIM decision can be read here.  

The ITSFRIDAY facts are not quite the same as WEBSHIPPING, and the scale of use in WEBSHIPPING is of a much greater magnitude than the IT’S FRIDAY use by the Daily Mail. Even so, I think like you do – that it is odd that the “we could not freely use our mark because someone else was infringing our rights in it” would succeed".

The IPKat has since been informed by genial fellow blogger and jolly nice fellow Gilberto Macias that, as this Kat had predicted, the Board of Appeal decision in WEBSHIPPING has been appealed, as Case T-142/15 - DHL Express (France) v OHIM - Chronopost (WEBSHIPPING).

Around the weblogs. Most exciting of the recent posts, in this Kat's view, was that which appeared on the 1709 Blog and told the tale of the triumph of good over whatever the opposite is, as viewed through the eyes of Jonathan Webb, a photographer whose copyright was flagrantly infringed and who received damages at many times more than the amount the infringer would have had to pay for a licence. You can read the whole story here.  Elsewhere, Kingsley Egbuonu posts Part II of his article on busy times in WIPO for Africa, and Mark Schweizer garlands the Class 46 blog with two recent 'corrections' of over-restrictive IP Office decisions that knocked out perfectly good marks (COS and STELA) on account of their geographic significance.