Friday Festivities

As the first IPKat post of the New Year the Kats would like wish their readers a very happy, successful, and safe 2010!

Nokia went a step further last Tuesday in their continuing patent dispute against Apple by filing a complaint to the US International Trade Commission alleging that Apple infringes seven Nokia patents “in virtually all of its mobile phones, portable music players, and computers." This complaint follows the original October patent suit filed in Delaware by Nokia against Apple and Apple’s countersuit alleging Nokia is infringing 13 Apple patents. Paul Melin, general manager of Nokia’s patent licensing stated that “[w]hile our litigation in Delaware is about Apple’s attempt to free-ride on the back of Nokia’s investment in wireless standards, the ITC case filed today is about Apple’s practice of building its business on Nokia’s proprietary innovation. For more information see this article in the Guardian and this article in the FT.

The environmental group Save the Earth is suing Honda for the appearance of a t-shirt bearing the eponymous trade mark in one of Honda’s advertisements for their Civic automobile. Save the Earth alleges that the appearance of their trade mark in the ad could lead viewers to believe that they endorse the automobile. For more information please see this article in the New York Times.

News from the 2010 New Years Honours – The IPKat would like to congratulate Dr Michael Thomas Barlow who has been awarded an OBE for “services to intellectual property law”. Dr Barlow has an MA and D. Phil in Chemistry from the University of Oxford. Until November 2008 he was Head of Global Patents and Technology Law for BP. He is on the committee of the IPO’s Business to Business (B2B) Licensing Group which develops materials for SMEs on IP licensing (see here) and co-author of the 2003 Royal Society report entitled “Keeping Science Open – the effects of intellectual property policies on the conduct of science”.