Wednesday whimsies

If you want to know why there have been so many empty seats in this year's World Cup matches, perhaps the answer lies here. According to the BBC, world football supremos Fifa are considering legal action against Dutch brewery Bavaria, which it accuses of using women supporters to advertise its beer through ambush marketing. Stewards apparently ejected 36 of the lovely ladies during the second half of the Netherlands-Denmark match in Johannesburg. All the women were "dressed identically in tightly hugging short orange dresses, sold as part of a gift pack". The eviction was intended to protect the investment of the World Cup's authorised beer sponsor, Budweiser. Apart from beginning with the letter 'B', both beers have something else in common: they've both recently featured in disputes before the Court of Justice of the European Union. Merpel notes a degree of geographical confusion. Bavaria v Anheuser-Busch sounds like a Germany-USA match, but it's really the Netherlands versus its old rival Belgium. The IPKat thanks many readers who have drawn this item to his attention.

Thank you, Mariola Kalinska (GreenLight) for this link to a feature in Grazia Fashion which compares the most recent advertisement for Cadbury's (now Kraft's) Flake. The Flake ad bears more than a passing resemblance to the late fashion designer's Alexander McQueen’s 1996 show, in which celebrity waif Kate Moss appeared as a floating hologram, an image created for him by Baillie Walsh. According to Grazia "The Alexander McQueen Company has decided not to see the ad as a flattering example of ‘trickle down’ and may sue Cadburys. The confectionery company sees no problem: it believes it's Walsh's house style, not McQueen's IP, to which its promotional puff alludes. Says the IPKat, so long as it's not "free-riding", a term that deeply stirs the emotions of Europe's top judges. Says Merpel, a cynic might consider it appropriate that a flaky chocolate stick is advertised through an allusion to a flaky, stick-like model.

The most recent issue of Lawtext's Bio-Science Law Review (BioSLR) has now been published. You can peruse the contents here. Features of note include "Invalidity for lack of Industrial Application - The Court of Appeal hands down its decision in ELi Lilly & Co. v Human Genome Sciences Inc", by the IPKat's friend and IPSoc founder Charlotte Weekes (now with Pinsent Masons).


The new UK coalition government is publishing an emergency budget next Tuesday, 22 June. If there's anything in it that will have an impact on intellectual property rights, the IP Finance blog will be covering it. You can follow the rest of the emergency budget news as it happens on the Olswang Budget Blog here.