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There are only 115 days and 10 hours until Christmas! On this last day of the summer holiday, IPKat purrs with excitement to present its readers the hottest announcements on the horizon! Lots of events, a new IP course, open vacancy, writing competitions and a call for papers will keep the IP community busy for the next few months! Events On 17 th of September 2018 , as part of London Design Festival, Gowling WLG will be hosting a Q&A event with a panel of design experts discussing the opportunities for designers in this multigenerational world.  The panel of design experts will discuss their experience in designing innovative new products and services and how they've protected their ideas. With increased innovation comes increased copying, so the session will cover practical ways you can protect yourself cost-effectively. Registration for this event is at 4pm, and the event begins at 4.30pm. Drinks on the Gowling WLG balcony overlooking the Thames will take place at 5.45pm....

This Kat is pleased to put her paws on Anti-Counterfeiting: Practice and Procedure , written by Ralph Wehrle, a solicitor with over 25 years of experience in the area.  The book provides an overview of the criminal and civil law applicable in England and Wales, as well as other actions that may be taken to prevent counterfeiting. The book is divided into seven parts. In Part I, some highlights of the trade in infringing products are provided. First, the distinction between counterfeit and pirated goods is established, recognizing that the term counterfeit �is often used colloquially to refer to any product that imitates a genuine one but has been produced and/or distributed without the appropriate authority of a rights holder�. For the author, however, �counterfeit" refers to a product infringing a trademark, while "pirated" refers to a product infringing copyright.  Various trends in relation to the industries worst affected by counterfeiting (e.g. fashion and pharmace...

From news outlets to academic writing, publishing online is now part of the mainstream amongst publishers. It is relatively inexpensive, instantaneous and reaches readers worldwide. But the dynamism of internet publications does have one inconvenient-- "link rot". �Link rot� refers to the decoupling of the hyperlink (or URL) with the webpage with which it was originally associated, rendering the link useless. While you may not be familiar with the phrase link rot itself, undoubtedly you will have experienced some of its most irritating symptoms: �page error 404�, �The URL you requested was not found� or �Oops! Something wrong happened�. Research shows that, on average, a staggering 50% of links will be decoupled from their original content, i.e. turned to rot, two years following publication (see here and here ). With weblinks spreading to footnotes, research paper citations and court reports referencing evidence or information, link rot has become a threat to academic rigou...

Although the World Cup is over, this Kat can�t keep his mind off thinking about MORE football � or soccer (as Americans call it). In 2016, the Union des Associations Europ�ennes de Footbal (UEFA) filed an application with the US Copyright Office to have the famous Starball logo registered as a copyright work of two-dimensional visual art. The Starball logo is composed of a round ball, made up of black stars, with white polygons in the negative space between the stars. The shapes are arranged into a circular space, with the outer stars curved to follow the circumference (see below). The US Copyright Office rejected the application. UEFA thus appealed the decision to the US Copyright Office Review Board (CORB), which however confirmed the prior assessment in a decision issued earlier this summer. UEFA set forward a number of claims in its Second Request for Reconsideration for Refusal to Register. First, it claimed that the work was sufficiently creative (original) due to the logo�s co...

Have you ever criticized or commended a decision of a judge?  Did you ever say over drinks to your colleagues, "That decision made no sense whatsoever!  They completely missed [insert grievance]"?  Have you read a decision only to get at the end to think "Would I have decided it differently?" or "How on earth did they manage to keep awake during those submissions and summarize everything?"  Does a judge's ability to give ex tempore judgments fill you with awe and, equally, dread as you white knuckle it through that particular courtroom rollercoaster (::clench::)?   Chances are, if you are a warm blooded litigator, you have answered "Yes!" to all of those questions. Time to dip those fuzzy little paws into life as an IP judge Yet, for all of our claims, criticism and commendations, so many of us solicitors do not entertain a career at the bench.  But, it is about time we start giving it more thought. We need more IP judges, especially as our...

Does a blocking injunction against an intermediary only concern the domain names indicated in the relevant order or can it be also considered as encompassing future infringements committed through other domain names? This is the question that the Milan Court of First Instance (Tribunale di Milano) had to address in the context of interim proceedings between publisher Mondadori and a number of major Italian internet access providers (ISPs). It provided an interesting response in two twin decisions [available here ] issued last June and which the IPKat has learned about thanks to Katfriend Valentina Borgese . Background In 2017 publisher Mondadori requested the Milan Court of First Instance to issue an interim injunction against a number of major Italian internet access providers (ISPs) consisting of an order to adopt the most appropriate measures to block access to a platform and all the different domain names ( alias ) under which it operated and from which unauthorized copies of Monda...

It's August.  The Friday before a Bank Holiday weekend.  So surely, Mr Justice Birss is not handing down a meaty patent judgment today?  Think again.  This morning, Birss J handed down his decision in Chugai Pharmaceutical v UCB & Celltech [ 2018] EWHC 2264 in favor of Chugai. The issue The AmeriKat heads into her Bank Holiday weekend armed with Birss J's latest judgment The case concerns a worldwide licence granted to Chugai by UCB, for US patent 7,566,771 entitled "Humanised Antibodies".  This patent expires on 29 July 2026 and is one of a portfolio of patents licenced to Chugai.  Under the licence, royalties are paid on the sales of a relevant product in a territory if that product falls within the scope of one of the patent's claims (i.e. "infringes") irrespective of the patent's validity unless and until the patent is finally declared invalid (see Jacob LJ in  Celltech v Medimmune   [2004] EWCA Civ 1331 ).  The language of the lice...

Following this Kat's post on the Ed Sheeran copyright infringement case relating to the song "Shape of You" ( here ), she came across another similar dispute going on over the pond! This case, brought in the US District Court of California, is between Plaintiffs Marcus Gray, Chike Ojukwu, and Emanuel Lambert who are Christian rap/hip-hop artists and Defendants Katheryn Elizabeth Hudson (Katy Perry), Jordan Houston (Juicy J), Lukasz Gottwald (Dr Luke) as well as a number of other individuals and music publishers.  The allegation was first filed on the 1st July 2014, which claimed that the song �Dark Horse� infringed upon the Plaintiffs� copyright in the song �Joyful Noise.� On 25th June 2018 the defendants filed a motion for a summary judgement  and the Court hearing took place on 13th August. Kitty Perry - by Molly Marshall  � Joyful Noise � appears on Gray�s 2008 album titled Our World Redeemed. The album debuted at #5 on the Billboard Gospel Chart, #1 on the Christian M...