Monday miscellany

Kickstarter and the Kat's sidebar poll. There's not much time left for anyone who is still pondering their point of view and deciding how to vote on the issue of whether crowdsourcing fund-raisers like Kickstarter should be made to face the perils of patent infringement proceedings together with the businesses they fund but over which they have no control.  For details of the original post click here.  You can find the sidebar poll on the top left hand side of the IPKat's home page.

Retail and IP again. It's only a week since the IPKat was chortling with happiness at the launch of the Intellectual Property and Retailers Conference next February -- and now the same subject has just popped up again.  The amicable and enthusiastic Lee Curtis has just written to inform him that, following the success of his Fashion+IP and Automotive+IP LinkedIn groups, he has now become even more adventurous and started a new LinkedIn Group, Retail+IP. Says Lee, "All three groups are open to all and are well policed to keep topics on subject, as you know". Good luck, Lee, says the Kat, I'll be there.


Still on the subject of retail, but with a somewhat different twist, UK law firm Clarke Willmott's second annual counterfeiting survey, recently commissioned with the firm's client ghd, has now delivered its results.  Covering 2,145 adults in the UK, it was carried out by YouGov and contains some fascinating findings.  For example,

Too young to be tempted?

* 22% of male respondents had knowingly bought fake goods, as against just 14% of females.

* a further 9% of men (down from 10% last year) and 12% of women (up from 8% last year) admitted that they'd been tempted to buy counterfeit goods.

* older people are less likely to purchase counterfeit goods (15% of the over 55s, as against 22% of 25-34 year-olds), but younger adults (18-24) are the least likely to do so, at just 10%.

* the highest percentage of people who have bought counterfeit products was found in Wales (23%), followed by Northern Ireland (22%) and Scotland (20%). The area with the lowest percentage of people who had bought counterfeit products was the East of England (15%).

You can access the report in full via the firm's IP page here.

Ghana: IP social media
thrive, but not official websites

Around the weblogs. Hardly a week goes by without Kingsley Egbuonu taking Afro-IP to some exotic African location or other, in search of IP news, views and/or progress towards the provision of useful official online services for IP owners and applicants.  In recent days he has been to Nigeria ("set to impose copyright levies on everything under the sun"? There's a lot of sun in Nigeria ...) and Ghana. Another bonny blog traveller is the 1709 Blog's Iona Harding who, through no fault of her own, finds herself in the Philippines and with time to reflect on that vast and complex jurisdiction's copyright position.  The latest issue of JIPLP leads with a powerful editorial from Kat colleague Neil with the title "Trade Secrets: a perfect storm of unavoidable neglect?", which you can read in full on the jiplp weblog.

The Supreme Court is all
very well, but some Kats
still mourn the passage
of the Judicial Committee
of the House of Lords

Supreme Court determines fate of IP appeals.  A katpat to Benjamin Pell for supplying some useful information for anyone who has been holding his or her breath while waiting to discover what the UK Supreme Court is about to do, or not do, to some of the jurisdiction's major Court of Appeal decisions. In particular:

* Les Laboratoires Servier and another (Appellants) v Apotex Inc and Others (Respondents) UKSC 2012/0158: permission to appeal was granted on 28 November (see IPKat post here for background);

* Gedeon Richter Plc (Appellant) v Bayer Schering Pharma AG (Respondent) UKSC 2012/0091 (noted by the IPKat here). Permission to appeal was refused as the issue turned wholly on questions of fact which had actually been decided twice against the Appellant.

* Nokia OYJ (Nokia Corporation) (Appellant) v IPCom GmbH & Co KG (Respondent) UKSC 2012/0146 (see IPKat here).  Permission to appeal was refused on the added matter issue and on the revocation issue; the application would however adjourned until after (i) the determination of the European Patent Office appeal and (ii) the restoration or withdrawal of the Virgin appeal, with liberty to either party to apply on the occurrence of either these events.