Info from the IPI

The Intellectual Property Institute (IPI), London, is holding a seminar in a fortnight which will be hosted by Milbank Tweed Hadley & McCloy LLP in its rather lovely premises.

Right: refreshments will be provided - but opportunities for ambushing will be kept to a minimum

The topic is "Look out! It's am ambush!" and the speaker is Phillip Johnson, a barrister at 7 New Square (but not yet on its website) and, coincidentally, book review editor for the Journal of Intellectual Property Law and Practice (JIPLP).

According to the blurb,

"Major sporting events such as the World Cup and the Olympics originally allowed anyone to provide some form of sponsorship to share the marketing benefits of the association. In 1984 this all changed with the introduction of exclusive sponsorship deals for the Los Angeles Games. For the first time major brands were kept out by the event organizers, but those brands found ways of retaining the marketing benefits without paying for sponsorship. Ambush marketing was born.

As the sums of money paid by the sponsors increased over time, the event organizers began pushing host countries to provide them with quasi-property protection to enhance and retain sponsorship funds. As each major event passes it appears the protection granted by the host country is being ratcheted upwards. This talk will look at the development of sui generis protection for events (and sponsors) around the world, showing how the ambusher has become the ambushed".

Full details of the seminar - and the speaker - are available here.


The IPI has also just published a new tract, Address for Service Requirements and Restrictions on the Provision of Services by Patent Agents in the EU.

Left: patent attorneys continue to make great efforts to improve their service ...

This is a report by Oxford scholar Daniel Burkitt on a subject that may have passed most people by. The story goes like this:

"Recently the European Commission filed a trade mark application in the UK. They objected to being required by the UK Patent Office to provide an address for service within the United Kingdom. The UK Patent Rules 1995 have now been amended to allow patent applicants to file an address for service anywhere in the EU, although a UK address will be required in respect of contested proceedings unless the comptroller directs otherwise.

TMPDF believes that local 'address for service' and related requirements add to applicants' costs, and inhibit the development of new types of operation relating to the obtaining of patents, registered trade marks and registered designs.

TMPDF has therefore commissioned this report, from the IP Institute, on local 'address for service' and related requirements for obtaining patents in EU States other than the United Kingdom. In this connection, 'related requirements' refers principally to restrictions on persons who can act as agents. Requirements to provide translations into local languages are not dealt with in this report.

The report concentrates on patents because (a) patents are more expensive to obtain than trade mark or design registrations; (b) covering trade marks and designs would multiply the issues; and (c) the EU trade mark and design systems already afford companies a practical way of avoiding the national systems, but there is as yet no EU patent system. The report concentrates on countries in which patenting activity is significant".

Well, there you are. The cost of this little report (just 28 pages, starting effectively on page 3) is £25 plus the cost of postage and packaging. It's in the IPI's usual A4 paperback format and its ISBN is 1 874001 93 6. You can get details of this and all the IPI's other publications here.