European Commission makes sweeping changes; Latest MIP

European Commission makes sweeping changes

It is with a mixed bag of emotions that the IPKat views the codification by the European Commission of the rag-tag provisions of some of its oft-amended directives. We now have

* Directive 2006/114 of 12 December 2006 concerning misleading and comparative advertising (codified version) - in force from 12 December 2007

* Directive 2006/115 of 12 December 2006 on rental right and lending right and on certain rights related to copyright in the field of intellectual property - in force from 16 January 2007 (ie 20 days from the date of its publication of the Official Journal)

* Directive 2006/116 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 12 December 2006 on the term of protection of copyright and certain related rights (codified version) - in force from 16 January 2007 (ie 20 days from the date of its publication of the Official Journal)

These provisions are clearer and easier to use than their uncodified forebears. Who has not been infuriated by the previous need to make mention of

"Council Directive 84/450/EEC of 10 September 1984 concerning misleading and comparative advertising, as amended by Directive 97/55/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 6 October 1997"?

On the other hand, we now have to learn a new set of citations and remember what they have replaced when we read the old cases that interpreted them. Fortunately, though, Directive 2006/114 comes with a concordance of Articles in the repealed Directives and their new names in the codifying Directive.

Left: the IPKat, who has had many a brush with the law, contemplate making some sweeping changes of his own

Merpel says, any inconvenience caused here is nothing to the codification that you're going to have to learn to live with once the byzantine section numbering of the much-amended Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 finally gets sorted out.


Latest MIP

The IPKat's seasonal break has given him a chance to catch up on his reading and, in particular, to leaf through the December 2006/January 2007 issue of Euromoney's ten-times-a-year journal Managing Intellectual Property. It carries an in-house feature from Emma Barraclough, "Why a slim portfolio is a healthy portfolio", on cutting costs by getting rid of superfluous IP rights. Next month, the IPKat guesses, there will be an article on the theme of "Why a fat portfolio is a healthy portfolio", on how important it is for a business to build up a stock of unnecessary and probably spurious IP rights so that it can license them to fellow members of the same officially-sanctioned patent pool (Merpel says, stop being so cynical - that's my job).
Take a look also at editor James Nurton's succinct review of the Gowers Review - the first in print from any of the serious IP periodicals.