Recent periodicals

Despite its somewhat unattractive acronym, Product & Image Security has some useful and attractive content. This bimonthly journal focuses on the growing demand for practical information relating to menas of dealing with counterfeiting, forgery, product piracy, substitution and diversion of goods on a practical basis, not to mention downstream crime such as retail theft and product tampering. Each issue contains articles relating to security materials, security holograms and applications, product identification, authentication, traceability, brand image protection, security labels, tags, tickets and packaging seals -- plus a variety of trade advertisements. This issue contains one item that particularly caught the IPKat's eye: "Pressing ahead -- The Giori Story", a surprisingly interest account of developments in the technology of the intaglio printing process and its contribution to product and label security.


The September 2008 issue of Sweet & Maxwell's monthly IP flagship journal, the European Intellectual Property Review, has commendably come out ahead of its cover date once again. In this issue the IPKat's venerable old friend Axel von Hellfeld (Wuesthoff & Wuesthoff), "Patent infringement in Europe: the British and German approaches to claim construction or purposive construction versus equivalency", which is based on a paper Axel delivered in Australia in March 2007. This piece charts the old British Catnic/Improver test against its German counterpart, the Schneidmesser test, with some fascinating results.

The Kat was also glad to spot a dissertation by a rather younger friend James Tumbridge (Gowlings) on whether the Canadian Supreme Court has anything to teach the British -- with their tiny quantity of case law on famous marks -- on a subject that will not develop much in this country until the Court of Appeal for England and Wales, armed with the ECJ's ruling in Intel v CPM (see IPKat's comment on the Attorney General's comment here), gets a steady diet of cases for their Lordships to practise on.


Also from the Sweet & Maxwell stable comes the scholarly Intellectual Property Quarterly which, as its name suggests, is published at regular three-month intervals. This issue leads with "Thinking Locally, Acting Globally: how trade negotiations over geographical indications improvise 'fair trade' rules".

Right: trade negotiators enjoy a little relaxation in between rounds of negotiation

The author, the prolific Antony Taubman, is Director, Global IP Issues Division, at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) - a job that the IPKat would dearly like to if it didn't mean having to spend so much time (i) listening politely to other people and (ii) having to publish a disclaimer everytime he said something interesting. This is a must-read for any trade negotiator, though the Kat doubts that many of them would pick up the subtle messages this article contains.