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Friday fantasies
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Taking no chances: this is a photoof Rihanna hiding behind the treeon the left ...Publicity-shy: no; publicity-conscious: yes. Famed (or infamous?) US-based singer Rihanna is apparently preparing for a new career as a UK litigant, it being repo...
Dreaming (Literally) about Patent Litigation and the "Right" Result
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The IPKat is usually a gentle creature, but when he chooses to dig his IP claws into something, it can leave long-lasting marks. Something like that has been going lately in connection with patent litigation activity. Fellow Kats Jeremy, here, Darren...
The monetarisation of Let's Plays: an exercise in copyright management
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Despite his impressive pedigree, having served time as a patent examiner with the UK's Intellectual Property Office, Katfriend and Page Hargrave trainee patent attorney Sean Gilday is modest enough to describe himself as something of a novice in the...
"But everyone else does it": the Corporate edition
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Last week, fellow Kat Neil delighted us with a brilliant post on one of the biggest nightmares of IP lawyers, who are so often confronted with the wisdom of the crowd. “But everyone else does it” is not only the client’s dreaded res...
Can unfit copyright laws favour businesses' growth and emergence of new services?
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Surely thinking about (bad) copyright and innovation:Katfriend, photographer and copyright ownerDouglas McCarthy's PushkinaAfter a week in Shanghai, this Kat is back on the blogosphere with a question which has been haunting her for the past few days...
The Green Mountain state sues a Texas patent troll
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This cat can attest that the state of Vermont is not only one of America's loveliest states, with big lakes and green mountains, but one of its quirkiest too. The place has a penchant for electing socialist Senators and hosting "Bread and Puppet" the...
Wednesday whimsies
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Queijo de Cabra Transmontano: non-minor-amended PDOAround the weblogs. Until this Kat met Meera Nair, he was unaware of her copyright law and policy weblog Fair Duty. Well, here it is, and it's definitely worth taking a look at. Meanwhile, the...
Speedypats can be okay -- if handled with care
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Will it all be plain sailing for speedypats?Little over a month ago ("Coming soon: Speedypats", here), this Kat reported on the proposal in the United Kingdom to grant superfast national patents in just 90 days. He expressed some anxiety as to...
Huawei: the Duesseldorf court presumes to ask
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The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has been asked to consider some questions of vital importance to our understanding of how patent monopolies and standard-essential proprietary technologies fit in with the European Union's omnipowerfu...
Copyright and performance: reflections on a complex relationship
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Although this Kat has recently been living with a spotty connection, which almost cut him off the blogosphere for a week, he noticed that Professor Rebecca Tushnet published a new article on 'Performance Anxiety: Copyright Embodied and...
Focusing one's sights on invalid dependent claims
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Here are the conclusions from a recent case in the Patents Court (the last two paragraphs of the judgment with some explanatory notes added by the IPKat for context). 228. As appears from my treatment of the issues above, I have concluded that Leica...
Quibbling over minutiae? Or has something been overlooked? Concerns over UK implementation of the UPC Agreement and Unitary Patent
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This Kat has previously posted a couple of concerns about the implications of some details of the unitary patent and the Unified Patent Court Agreement - see here and here. Now this moggy is concerned about the UK ratification of this legislation. &n...
Monday miscellany
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New blog on the block. The IPKat was delighted to learn from his former colleague, Katonomist Nicola Searle, that the UK's Intellectual Property Office (IPO) is today launching IPO Facto, a research blog for the IPO's economics team. Merpel always ge...
Hatching Europe's Unified Patent Court: who will pay for the chickens and eggs?
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Imminent patent reform "delayed". Only three months after (most of) Europe's finest attached their signatures to the Unified Patent Court (UPC) proposal, the official view on the likely start date has slipped by a year from early 2014 to e...
And 12 Points go to ... Ukraine
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Uncle Sam, under the authority of the USTR, wants you to behave... Despite what the title might suggest, this post is not about the European's beloved festival of kitsch, where washed-up pop acts from the 90's and overzealous cast...
Friday fantasies
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Here's a reminder for readers who quite properly concern themselves with such trivia as whether they are giving (or taking) legal advice that comes from a reliable source. The Official Journal of the European Union has published on a number of...
Framing of videos: Court of Justice to rule
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Merpel sniffs the water forsigns of pollution*Yesterday the First Civil Senate of the German Bundesgerichtshof (BGH) -- one of the most active and influential national intellectual property courts you can ever hope to find in the new Europe -- referr...
The IP Lawyer's Nightmare: "But Everyone Else Does It"
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This blog is about one of the most dreaded moments in the life of any IP attorney. You have been asked by your client whether it can take some action, such as use of certain content taken from the internet or adoption of a trade mark "based" on the m...
Carry-on over Cariou: when works are transformative 'as a matter of law'
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In a world of fluctuating intellectual property law, we are used to seeing trends of judicial thought drifting first in one direction and then in another, as courts struggle to maintain the balance between rights owners and their competitors and betw...
From Alice to Apple: patentable subject matter crosses the Atlantic
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The theme of patentable subject matter, as laid down by statute and as interpreted by the courts, was the subject of a careful and detailed analysis by Professor Norman Siebrasse in his guest post yesterday on CLS v Alice. By way of contrast wi...
