Around the IP Blogs!
Keep up to date with the global IP news with IPKat's tour of the IP blogosphere! Highlights this week include a report on the progress of the "This is Spinal Tap" lawsuit in the US, the publication of the first issue of the Brazilian Case Law of the Boards of Appeal and a review of a new reference book on the UPC.
Copyright
The Kluwer Copyright Blog discusses the issue of copyright reform. Christina Angelopoulos (CIPIL, University of Cambridge) and Joao Pedro Quintais (Institute for Information Law (IViR)) argue that the European Commission proposal for a new Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market fails to address the real problem afflicting EU copyright law, which the authors identify as the proliferation of copyright infringement online in general, as opposed to that restricted to online sharing platforms. The authors go on to outline their two-pronged proposal to address the problem: Fixing Copyright Reform: How to Address Online Infringement and Bridge the Value Gap.
IPKat's Eleonora provides further commentary and analysis on the complicated relationship between AI and copyright on the 1709 Blog: Can a Work of Art Created by AI be Protected by Copyright?
IPwatchdog report on the progress of the lawsuit filed back in 2016 by the creators of This Is Spinal Tap against the French mass media conglomerate Vivendi S.A.. The suit alleges that Vivendi engaged in anticompetitive business activities to defraud the Spinal Tap creators of profits earned from the film. After the suit was filed the plaintiffs also issued copyright termination notices to recapture all copyrights to the characters, sound recordings and musical compositions that appeared in This is Spinal Tap. The case has now been allowed to move forward after the U.S. District Judge denied a motion filed by the defendants to dismiss the case based on the economic loss rule: Judge Denies Motions to Dismiss Fraud, Copyright Claims in ‘This Is Spinal Tap’ Lawsuit.
Trade marks
The weblog of the Journal of Intellectual Property Law and Practice (JIPLP) publishes an Authors' Take on the notion of consent in EU trade mark law, particularly in the context of the doctrine of exhaustion of rights and within the requirement to prove genuine use of a trade mark: The misconstrued notion of consent in EU trade mark law
Patents
IPTango reports on the issue of the first edition of the Instituto Nacional da Propriedade Industrial (INPI)'s online report of Brazilian Board of Appeal decisions: First edition of Brazilian Case Law from the Board of Appeal. IPTango comments that the report is clearly inspired by the Case Law of the Boards of Appeal of the EPO, but highlights the downside that the report only contains excerpts from the decisions, with no accompanying commentary or explanations. The published report can be seen here.
IPwatchdog reviews another decision by the US Court of Appeal of the Federal Circuit on patent inelligible subject matter. In the decision, the Federal Circuit ruled that BSG Tech's patents directed to a “self-evolving generic index” for organizing information stored in a database, relate to patent ineligible subject matter under: Patents Directed to Database Organization of Information Affirmed Invalid.
Patentlyo reports on the case before the Supreme Court between Helsinn Healthcare and Teva. The Supreme Court will consider whether the America Invents Act of 2011 directly addresses the pre-AIA precedent that secret sales activity and commercial uses by the patentee could negate patentability: Helsinn Healthcare S.A. v. Teva Pharma USA, Inc. The Supreme Court will particularly address the question of whether "under the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act, an inventor’s sale of an invention to a third party that is obligated to keep the invention confidential qualifies as prior art for purposes of determining the patentability of the invention".
The EPLaw Patent Blog reviews a new "Bible" in the form of a comprehensive (3040 page) reference book on the Unitary Patent and the Unified Patent Court: New Book - Unified Patent Protection in Europe - A Commentary, Winfried Tilmann and Clemens Plassmann.
Copyright
The Kluwer Copyright Blog discusses the issue of copyright reform. Christina Angelopoulos (CIPIL, University of Cambridge) and Joao Pedro Quintais (Institute for Information Law (IViR)) argue that the European Commission proposal for a new Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market fails to address the real problem afflicting EU copyright law, which the authors identify as the proliferation of copyright infringement online in general, as opposed to that restricted to online sharing platforms. The authors go on to outline their two-pronged proposal to address the problem: Fixing Copyright Reform: How to Address Online Infringement and Bridge the Value Gap.
IPKat's Eleonora provides further commentary and analysis on the complicated relationship between AI and copyright on the 1709 Blog: Can a Work of Art Created by AI be Protected by Copyright?
IPwatchdog report on the progress of the lawsuit filed back in 2016 by the creators of This Is Spinal Tap against the French mass media conglomerate Vivendi S.A.. The suit alleges that Vivendi engaged in anticompetitive business activities to defraud the Spinal Tap creators of profits earned from the film. After the suit was filed the plaintiffs also issued copyright termination notices to recapture all copyrights to the characters, sound recordings and musical compositions that appeared in This is Spinal Tap. The case has now been allowed to move forward after the U.S. District Judge denied a motion filed by the defendants to dismiss the case based on the economic loss rule: Judge Denies Motions to Dismiss Fraud, Copyright Claims in ‘This Is Spinal Tap’ Lawsuit.
 |
| "These go to 11" |
The weblog of the Journal of Intellectual Property Law and Practice (JIPLP) publishes an Authors' Take on the notion of consent in EU trade mark law, particularly in the context of the doctrine of exhaustion of rights and within the requirement to prove genuine use of a trade mark: The misconstrued notion of consent in EU trade mark law
Patents
IPTango reports on the issue of the first edition of the Instituto Nacional da Propriedade Industrial (INPI)'s online report of Brazilian Board of Appeal decisions: First edition of Brazilian Case Law from the Board of Appeal. IPTango comments that the report is clearly inspired by the Case Law of the Boards of Appeal of the EPO, but highlights the downside that the report only contains excerpts from the decisions, with no accompanying commentary or explanations. The published report can be seen here.
IPwatchdog reviews another decision by the US Court of Appeal of the Federal Circuit on patent inelligible subject matter. In the decision, the Federal Circuit ruled that BSG Tech's patents directed to a “self-evolving generic index” for organizing information stored in a database, relate to patent ineligible subject matter under: Patents Directed to Database Organization of Information Affirmed Invalid.
Patentlyo reports on the case before the Supreme Court between Helsinn Healthcare and Teva. The Supreme Court will consider whether the America Invents Act of 2011 directly addresses the pre-AIA precedent that secret sales activity and commercial uses by the patentee could negate patentability: Helsinn Healthcare S.A. v. Teva Pharma USA, Inc. The Supreme Court will particularly address the question of whether "under the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act, an inventor’s sale of an invention to a third party that is obligated to keep the invention confidential qualifies as prior art for purposes of determining the patentability of the invention".
The EPLaw Patent Blog reviews a new "Bible" in the form of a comprehensive (3040 page) reference book on the Unitary Patent and the Unified Patent Court: New Book - Unified Patent Protection in Europe - A Commentary, Winfried Tilmann and Clemens Plassmann.
Author: Rose Hughes
