Please note that the Patents County Court, (out of which the Judgments of the prolific Justice Birss emerge), is now called ‘the Intellectual Property Enterprise Court’. A significant ‘brand’change? The Court certainly addresses other infringements than just patent monopolies – including copyright, database rights infringement, trade mark and breaches of confidence to name a few. The ‘Intellectual Property Enterprise Court’ captures the wider miscellany of intellectual property rights.

The attached link takes you to the Court website and the Patents County Court Guide and the Guide to the Small Claims Track of the Patents County Court.

http://www.justice.gov.uk/courts/rcj-rolls-building/patents-county-court

Authorship and Ownership of CopyrightIn response to a recent enquiry, as to who owns copyright in published works, including academic publications, the three main provisions of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 are attached; (sections 9 to 11) which are the best starting point. Pursuant to section 9, the ‘author’ means the person who creates it, in the case of literary works, the author is taken to be the person by whom the arrangements necessary for the creation of the work are undertaken – in the University setting, is likely to be the Academic.

Section 10 addresses joint authorship, which means a work ‘produced by the collaboration of two or more authors in which the contribution of each author is ‘not distinct’ from that of the other author or authors. Section 11, the final section in the triumvirate confirms that the ‘author’ is the first owner of any copyright in it, subject to the important provision in section 11(2) that literary works etc made by employees in the course of employment, the employer is the first owner. The attached three sections is a good starting point for addressing prima facie ownership in copyright.

CK0207VolkswagenvGarciaBlog

The unreported case before Justice Birss, involving two Universities (one English, and one Dutch) has now been reported and is available on the www.bailii.org legal authorities website. The previous comment (when the decision was unavailable) is re-attached here. Further comment will follow upon reading Justice Birss’ judgment.

The decision of Justice Birss in Volkswagen v Garcia can be read at:

http://www.bailii.org/cgi-bin/markup.cgi?doc=/ew/cases/EWHC/Ch/2013/1832.html&query=volkswagen+and+v+and+garcia&method=boolean

Please find the attached Note on the above case of Euromark v Smash Enterprises Pty Ltd [2013] EWHC 1627 which concludes that what the parties conclude as to the jurisdiction governing the agreement is usually final; merits have little say in the matter. The case itself however explores this more fully, and is worth a read.

CK2908Exclusivejurisdictionclauses

The case of Euromark can be found at:

http://www.bailii.org/cgi-bin/markup.cgi?doc=/ew/cases/EWHC/QB/2013/1627.html&query=smash+and+enterprises&method=boolean

The European Commission IPR Helpdesk publication ‘Patent v Publishing’ (attached) is worthy of careful study. It contains discussion of the traditional tensions within the ‘to publish or not to publish’ conundrum, knowledge sharing, protection of inventiveness, short explanations of the methods used to transfer ownership of IP rights by way of assignment, licensing, and a short reference to Open Access to ‘the Commons’ – the policy that there should be as wide a dissemination of human knowledge and discovery to all as possible.

Patenting_v _publishing

The European Helpdesk website can be found at:

http://www.iprhelpdesk.eu/

BBC Programme: ‘Gene Patenting’

There is also a programme entitled ‘Gene Patenting’, currently on i-player which includes discussion of the tensions within ‘Patenting v Publishing’ in light of the recent US Supreme Court decision, involving the company known as Myriad and its attempts to patent the BRCA1 and BRCA2 gene sequence. The writer has not read the Myriad decision, but understands that Myriad was unsuccessful in its appeal to patent the particular gene sequence that was the subject of its considerable research. The link to the BBC programme is set out below.

Gene Patenting:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b037vb4d

This call has a deadline date of 26 September 2013.

The European Commission has launched a call for proposals for the provision of support services to assist European Union Small to medium sized enterprises in China. The budget is stated to be 1.2 million Euros (EUR 1 200 000)

The central aim of the call is to provide support services for European Union Small to medium sized enterprises with a view to protecting and enforcing Intellectual Property Rights in work either in, or relating to China. The target audience is both European small to medium sized enterprises in the EU (and those who already have a presence in China) or who are either investing in or doing business with China.

The specific objectives under the Call:

1. Provide EU SMEs with first line advice services

2. Developing and providing state of the art training materials and trainers

3. Report on the latest intellectual property law developments and available support to seek enforcement if possible

4. Provide the contents of a multi-lingual web portal for IPR protection in China, focusing on IPR protection in the business context

5. Monitor selected IPR cases and follow IP policy affecting SMEs

6. Presence at trade fairs and business parternship events

7. Providing basic support for initial contacts with local law enforcement agencies

For those who wish to ignore Napoleon’s masterly late 18th century soundbite (‘Let China sleep, for when she wakes she will shake the world’) full information for making the call to China can be found at:

http://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/portal/page/call_CIP?callIdentifier=73-G-ENT-CIP-13-B-N02C02&specificProgram=EIP

The recent Court of Appeal decision in Fairstar v Adkins, the lead judgment being given by Lord Justice Mummery, rejected the analysis of the first instance Judge (Justice Evans-Stuart) that the emails in the possession and control of an agent (acting in transactions of magnitude on behalf of the principal) cannot be delivered up to the principal (pursuant to the principal/agent relationship); on the basis that that the emails or their content had no proprietary character. The Court of Appeal adopted what they considered to be a more correct approach; namely that delivering up such documents was to be decided on the basis of the agent’s duties to its principal, and not analysing claims about whether emails have proprietary character.

Beginning the discussion asking questions like ‘Is there property in an email?’ or ‘Who owns the content of an email?’ was apparently distinctly unhelpful.

Lord Justice Mummery’s judgment is worth a read. The Court of Appeal decision can be read on bailii at:

http://www.bailii.org/cgi-bin/markup.cgi?doc=/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2013/886.html&query=fairstar+and+heavy+and+transport&method=boolean