Around the IP Blogs!

This Kitten is delighted to bring you the highlights from some recently published IP blogs!

This Kitten enjoyed a lot reading some IP blogs!

Nathaniel Boyer and Dori Hanswirth of LimeGreen IP News recaps James Paul McCartney v Sony ATV Music Publishing LLC. The case involves a declaratory judgement sought by Sir Paul McCartney to confirm the validity of his request for reversion of the assignment of copyright to Sony of works created as part of The Beatles as well in connection with his career as a soloist. McCartney did so by serving a series of notices based upon section 304 of the US Copyright Act 1976.

Moving to trademarks, John L. Welch of The TTABlog discusses Luxco, Inc. v Consejo Regulador del Tequila, A.C. in which the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (USPTO) dismissed an opposition based upon genericness, lack of legitimate control and fraud, filed by Luxco against registration of the certification mark TEQUILA filed by the Mexican Tequila Regulatory Council (TRC).

Over at Kluwer Trademark Blog, Bettina Clefsen reports on Cases 25 W (pat) 59/14 and 60/14, in which the German Federal Patent court cancelled trademark registrations consisting of dextrose sweets whose shapes enabled easy storage and consumption and were therefore necessary to obtain a technical result.

Moving to the topic of standard essential patents, Marco Lo Bue muses on TrustinIP whether the new IP policy of one of the standard setting organizations (the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers -IEEE-) complies with competition law.

Finally, turning to the field of Traditional Knowledge and Cultural Expressions, Afro-IP blog summarizes some initiatives, whose goal is to enable traditional communities to commercialize in an effective manner their indigenous knowledge. These initiatives include the South African Traditional Knowledge Bill and the Maasai Intellectual Property Initiative.