Ipq; Ipi; A Abrupt Idea

IPQ

The showtime number for 2006 of Sweet & Maxwell's scholarly Intellectual Property Quarterly has straightaway been published. At £322 for a year's subscription (that's £80.50 per issue), you're paying quite a lot for 71 pages. But the content is good. Among other features there's

* a thoughtful slice past times Jonathan Griffiths (Queen Mary, University of London) entitled "Misattribution as well as misrepresentation - the claim for opposite passing off every bit 'paternity' right". Reverse passing off is where a claimant objects that the accused has non represented that the defendant's goods are those of the claimant but that the claimant's goods are those of the defendant. This doctrine has been recognised inwards UK of Britain as well as Northern Republic of Ireland police push clit but on an ad hoc basis as well as it cries out for a line solid doctrinal basis if it is to hold upward properly understood every bit a tort.

* "On the Value of Copyright Theory" past times the University of Leicester's Lior Zemer.

Left: an IPQ contributor pauses to regard roughly other philosophical point.

has sometimes been sceptical most the role of theoretical contructs inwards legal analysis, but he agrees amongst Lior's opinion that "Inviting theory into discussions on the time to come of copyright laws does non hateful declaring the destination of copyright or the conk of the author". Theory is a agency of advancing debate; it is non nonetheless an destination inwards itself.

Merpel asks, tin strength out theory - which itself is extrapolated from reality - e'er possess a greater grade of 'reality' than the reality of the existent ground from which it was drawn ... Ah, says the IPKat, it all depends on what you lot hateful past times 'reality': for certain at that spot is no reality but merely the perception of reality. And you lot tin strength out perceive it through the senses (through sight, audio etc) or conceptually (through theoretical constructs).

IPI meeting

The Intellectual Property Institute is organising a seminar on "Database Right: Implications of the ECJ as well as Court of Appeal Judgments inwards British Horseracing Board v William Hill" on Midweek fifteen March 2006. It's absolutely gratuitous as well as registration begins at 4.30pm.

The outcome is hosted past times police push clit line solid Addleshaw Goddard (Venue: 150 Aldersgate Street, London EC1A 4EJ). The speaker is Hamish Porter (left, himself of Addleshaw Goddard), the chairman is Catriona Smith (Allen & Overy). If you're going. merely allow IPI administrator Anne Goldstein know.


A sudden, startling idea

Sitting inwards the C5 International Trade Marks & Designs conference inwards London yesterday IPKat co-blogmeister Jeremy had a abrupt thought. It occurred to him that

(i) inwards many countries, including England, marketplace survey testify of consumer confusion or consumer responses to fix images is oftentimes discarded past times the courtroom on the ground that it is unsound as well as unreliable;

(ii) sometimes both parties inwards a dispute committee their ain surveys, which agency that the courtroom is faced amongst 2 sets of methodologies as well as 2 sets of findings;

(iii) since the nifty shake-up of the Civil Procedure Rules, courts inwards England as well as Wales convey been given much greater example management powers;

(iv) the courts rarely appear to examination their example management powers out real much, maybe because of innate caution or maybe because they merely weren't brought upward amongst them as well as uncovering the concept alien.

Left: when exercising their example management powers, judges laid aside the wig as well as gown for the comfort of to a greater extent than informal wear

Now, what Jeremy wonders is this: tin strength out a judge, inwards the practise of his example management powers, gild the parties inwards an IP dispute to part the same marketplace survey on the basis that they must agree, inside a reasonable period, the questions to hold upward asked of the relevant consumer? If no such understanding is struck, the guess would thence appoint a marketplace surveyor himself. Comments, please, either below or past times email.

More on marketplace survey testify here as well as here