Monday miscellany

Prior to the Directive, Europe had a long
and colourful history of enforcement ...

Enforcement event. This year's JIPLP-GRUR Int London seminar takes place on Tuesday 8 September.  The subject is the impact of the EU's Intellectual Property Enforcement Directive (Directive 2004/48) on national litigation and the venue is the London office of law firm Taylor Wessing LLP (here). The two speakers are London-based barrister Michael Edenborough QC (Serle Court) and Hamburg-based lawyer Wiebke Baars (Taylor Wessing), with IPKat blogmeister and JIPLP editor Jeremy in the chair.  A panel discussion will take place following the presentation of the two papers, led by Anna Carboni (partner, Redd solicitors and an Appointed Person to hear trade mark appeals), Paul Stevens (Olswang CEO and former head of litigation, Olswang LLP) and Mark Owen (Taylor Wessing).  The panel-led discussion will be followed by questions and comments from the floor and a reception. Registration commences at 2.30 pm for a 3.00 pm start. The formal proceedings should be concluded by 6 pm and the reception will finish by 7 pm. Admission is free [irrespective of whether you subscribe to JIPLP, GRUR or to neither title] and it is believed that there will be some CPD credit. If you'd like to attend, just email Jeremy Phillips at jjip@btinternet.com with the subject line "Enforcement".

ORoPO: any experiences, any thoughts?  This Kat has taken an interest in the ORoPO project, which was launched four week ago [on which see IP Finance here]. For the record, ORoPO is the acronym of the Open Register of Patent Ownership and you can check it out here.  It's a non-profit exercise in which patent-owning businesses provide a verified list of patents which they held, the object of the exercise being to provide a truly reliable record of patent ownership [if you're wondering why this is necessary, this paper explains the problem]. and the companies backing it include ARM, BAE, IBM and Microsoft. A post on the Aistemos LinkedIn Group asks if any readers have any experiences of ORoPO that they can relate, or any thoughts about it. If you are one of those folk who has dabbled in it, or even if you have been caught out by inaccurate patent ownership records in the past, do share your thoughts.

"All things Brite and Beautiful ...!" A circular from the UK Intellectual Property Office (IPO) informs its recipients that yet another legal dispute involving trade marks has been referred to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) for a preliminary ruling. This latest reference is Case C-230/15 Brite Strike Technologies, a request from the Dutch Rechtbank in relation to the following questions:

I. Must the Benelux Convention on Intellectual Property (BCIP) ...  be considered to be a 'subsequent convention', with the result that Article 4.6 of the BCIP cannot be considered to be a special rule for the purposes of Article 71 of Regulation 44/2001 [on jurisdiction and the recognition and enforcement of judgments in civil and commercial matters]? 

If that question is answered in the affirmative: 

II. Does it follow from Article 22(4) of Regulation 44/2001 that the Belgian, Netherlands and Luxembourg courts all have international jurisdiction to take cognisance of the dispute? 

III. If not, how should it be determined, in a case such as the present, whether the Belgian, Netherlands or Luxembourg courts have international jurisdiction? Can Article 4.6 of the BCIP (nonetheless) be applied with a view to (further) determining international jurisdiction?

There's a very helpful background post on this reference on Pacta Sunt Servanda - Treaty Notifier here.  Meanwhile, if you have any brite bright ideas as to how these questions should be ask and want to share them with the good folk at the IPO, just email policy@ipo.gov.uk by close of play on Friday 17 July: you might just motivate the UK government into intervening in the CJEU proceedings.

Around the weblogs.  Saturday was a truly busy day on the 1709 Blog, which carried no fewer than four copyright-related stories.  The acquittal of the Pirate Bay Four of criminal charges in Belgium was followed by some wise reflections from Andy Johnstone on the extent to which the UK's intellectual property rights were capable of protecting original interior design. Ben Challis then related the sad fate of Adi Lederman for hacking and releasing incomplete Madonna tracks and the even sadder fate of Random House, publishers of a biography of Joseph Goebbels that made sufficient use of the former propaganda minister's diaries to be deemed an infringement of copyright [it is reported that this ruling is to be appealed]. Oh, and the 1709 Blog has not been quiet on Sunday either, with a report by Marie-Andrée Weiss on the New York state legislature's refusal again to recognise the existence of a post-mortem right of publicity.

After The Gold Rush, no Harvest?  "Don't play Neil Young or the Doors, BBC tells DJs and programme makers" is the title of a news item from the Guardian  which was brought to this Kat's attention by the BBC's own Chris Woods. The article also mentions Journey and Bonnie Raitt as entities that have withdrawn from the Mechanical Copyright Protection Society and are thus no longer covered by the MCPS's licence to the broadcaster.  The article reveals that Neil Young actually withdrew from the MCPS in 2002 and the Doors in 2006, though it's not clear why this has not caused any particular problems thus far.  This Kat speculates that, now that there is no longer a gold rush of MCPS royalties for Neil Young to harvest, it is been necessary to adopt a fresh business plan. As for the Doors, it seems that the classic line "Cancel my subscription to the resurrection" has been followed by a somewhat less momentous cancellation ...