Around the IP Blogs

For anyone is reading this blog who is a fan of IP issues, this Kat delicately selected some interesting posts from other blogs to offer more information. 

You want to know what happened around the
 IP blogosphere recently? Well, let me begin...

Patents

Kluwer Patent blog reported on Ingve Björn Stjerna’s article on the issue of the compatibility of the Unified Patent Court Agreement (UPCA) and two pieces of draft legislation submitted for its ratification in Germany with the German constitution. He is the lawyer behind the constitutional complaint against the UPCA which led to a stay of ratification proceedings in Germany.

EPlaw Patent Blog reported on the decision of the Court of Appeal in UK in Anan Kasei Co. Ltd & Rhodia Operations S.A.S. v Neo Chemicals and Oxides Limited & Neo Performance Materials Inc. This case relates to the sufficiency of European Patent (UK) No. 1 435 338 (the “Patent”). In the decision, Lord Justice Floyd provided further guidance on the law of sufficiency, in particular insufficiency due to ambiguity (or uncertainty) and excessive claim breadth.

The release of an in-depth analysis paper ‘EU Patent and Brexit’ (requested by the JURI committee) in the EU was perhaps the most covered news of the last week - this was covered by the IPKat (here), but you can find other articles on the topic from the Kluwer Patent Blog and EPLaw, as well as the paper itself here.

IPWatchdog also looks at the recently released EPO study on SMEs and their pursuit of patent filings.

Copyright

Kluwer Copyright Blog continued with Part II of its analysis of Article 17 of the EU DSM Directive and the copyright limitations - this time examining the availability of limitations under Art 17(7) and the complaint and redress mechanism under Art 17(9). You can also find Part I of the series here.

The Kluwer Copyright Blog also presents Part I of a two-part series looking at the CJEU case of Pelham v Hütter and Schneider-Esleben, beginning with an examination of the sampling-specific implications of the ruling, as well as the understanding of the notion of a ‘copy’ under the Rental and Lending Rights Directive.

In the US, the CASE Act (Copyright Alternative in Small-Claims Enforcement) has split opinions as to its usefulness and effectiveness. IPWatchdog interestingly presents two articles, one in favour of the CASE Act and the other alleging the CASE Act is bad policy despite its good intentions.

Trade Marks

Florica Rus and Verena von Bomhard, in the Kluwer Trademark blog, summarised and commented on several recent cases concerning the issue of bad faith in trade mark law by the General Court and the Court of Justice of the European Union. They detected that the assessment of bad faith seems to have become stricter, focusing more on balancing the interests of the trade mark owner and the competition in the market.

Other

In SpicyIP Blog, Balu Nair reported on the decision by Justice Prathiba M Singh of the Delhi High Court in Baba Ramdev case, wherein the Court issued an interim injunction directing Google, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and other unnamed intermediaries to take down on a global basis, defamatory content uploaded on their platforms against Baba Ramdev.

In the IP Finance blog, it is reported that the National Collegiate Athletics Association, an organisation which essentially regulates collegiate athletics in the United States, has voted to begin the process of allowing student athletes to profit from the use of their name, image and likeness.