Monday miscellany

The June edition of the IPso Jure podcast is now available here. Subjects covered are last week's US Supreme Court decision in Bilski (on which, please also see PatLit here and the AmeriKat here and here), the Advocate General's opinion in Flos (an Italian reference to the Court of Justice of the European Communities on the interface between copyright and designs law, noted on Class 99 here and here), the Patents Court decision in Edwards on priorities in patent applications (here) and a "reverse-Edwards" dilemma (here), and a malicious falsehood case in the Court of Appeal - a very rare thing (see the IPKat here) -- plus all the usual stuff about the latest law from the Court of Justice (which has received an astonishing number of referrals this month), the General Court, the English courts, the EPO, the IPO, OHIM, you name it ... As before, the download is free but anyone wishing to get their CPD this way can do so on payment of a modest fee (details available onsite).

Now that we're all talking about Bilski, questions are being asked not only about its impact on the future, but also about the validity of US patents from the recent past. Manpreet Singh Sood asks, what about the patent granted for Google's home page (discussed by Gawker here)? How would this patent fare in the cold light of Bilski? Readers' comments and suggestions are, as ever, welcome.


If you fancy yourself as a clever, know-it-all copyright lawyer, there's a chance to come to the aid of a distressed reader of the 1709 Blog -- if you have any useful advice to offer here. So far, two fairly substantial commentators have both chosen to post their comments anonymously ...

The IPKat is anxious that his readers are insufficiently cultured, which is why he'd like to draw their attention to two books which will expand their cultural sensitivities. Well, actually the truth is that he has two books on his desk which he was saving to read in his garden on a fine, sunny day -- and they both have the word 'culture' in their titles. That's pretty much all they have in common, as it turns out.

The first title, Law, Knowledge, Culture: the Production of Indigenous Knowledge in Intellectual Property Law, turns out to be a perceptive analysis by respected Australian scholar Jane E. Anderson. Published by Edward Elgar, this book has evolved from the author's doctoral studies and it provides, within the framework of creativity among indigenous authors and their communities (particularly Aboriginal Australians), a fascinating basis for reflecting back on our own IP-driven assumptions.

The second title, Intellectual Property Culture, by US attorneys Eric M. Dobrusin and Ronald A. Krasnow, is subtitled Strategies to Foster Successful Patent and Trade Secret Practices in Everyday Business, which immediately alerts the reader to the small likelihood of finding anything about Aboriginal art within its crisp, businesslike and practical prose. Published by Oxford University Press (details here), it is neither a manual for practising lawyers in private practice nor a set of rules for in-house IP portfolio management, but rather a book to be shared by those two legal cultures as a means of enabling client and attorney to function smoothly together as they identify, discuss and seek to achieve their goals.