Plant Breeder's Rights actions in the Federal Court 

According to a notice to practitioners posted on the Vic Bar website, plant breeder's rights actions for infringement in the Federal Court will now be regarded as intellectual property cases for the purposes of docket allocation and allocated to one of Heerey (Convenor), Sundberg, Weinberg, Kenny, Jessup, Middleton and Gordon JJ.

Purple haze 

Following the reconvened trial on remitter from the Full Court which ruled that expert evidence had been impermissibly excluded at first instance, Heerey J has ruled that Darrell Lea was not misrepresenting itself or its products as Cadbury products between 2000 and 2004 when it used a dark shade of purple for Christmas promotions ... 

Nanotechnology

Did you know there was an Australian Office of Nanotechnology?

It has a strategy which commenced in July 2007

Key initiatives within the strategy are:

* a state-of-the-art atomic force microscope for the National Measurement Institute (NMI) to provide new calibration service for nanoscale standards in Australia;

* a Health, Safety and Environmental (HSE) Working Group to coordinate regulatory issues relating to nanotechnology; and

* a Public Awareness and Engagement Program.

You can find out more about the Office and the Strategy ... 

Metatags 

Prof. Goldman reports that the 11th Circuit has found the use of a competitor's trade marks in metatags is trade mark infringement.

Along the way, the 11th Circuit took some swipes at the 2nd Circuit's When-U ruling and, perhaps confusingly, sought to limit the scope of their own ruling ...

The Trials of Art 

Now that the High Court has enjoined judges not to be in terror of making artistic judgments, perhaps we should be reading Daniel McClean's The Trials of Art which, according to IPKat includes an intro by Lord Hoffmann referring to that Hensher case ...

GIs for Food 

IPKat positively reviews Geographical Indications For Food Products: international, legal and regulatory perspectives by Marsha A. Echols ...

Sorry 2

Presumably, as part of efforts to implement Sorry in a meaningful way, IP Australia has adopted a Reconciliation Action Plan (pdf), which has been officially endorsed by Reconciliation Australia...

Patent failure part 2 

Remember how Professors Besson and Meurer started summarising their thesis that patents (at least in the US) are not providing the incentives to innovation they are supposed to?

There is a second instalment 'The Costs and Benefits of Patents to Innovators' ...

Sponsored links 

Remember how, in a world first, the ACCC sued Google and the Trading Post over "sponsored links" which were alleged to be misleading or deceptive.

Well, the Australian IT reports that Telstra has settled with the ACCC, admitting that its Trading Post division had engaged in misleading and deceptive conduct ...

Copyright in an idea or an expression?

Kim Weatherall, abandoning her self-imposed exile, has a close look at recent Federal Court decisions finding that one project home builder's plans had been infringed by others who adopted the alfresco feature ... 

38 years is almost too long

The Court of Appeal has partly upheld an appeal in the Whiter Shade of Pale case ... 

Linklaters 

 Linklaters' latest edition of their EU IP update is online here.

Resale right 

Now that the new (?) Labor Federal Government is planning to introduce a resale right for visual artists, you may want to review the Intellectual Property Institute's report on the operation of the UK right ... 

Ajinomoto

The Full Court has dismissed Ajinomot's appeal from Finkelstein J's finding that its patent for a new artificial sweetener was invalid because it lacked an inventive step.

The main point in the appeal was whether the botched attempt to introduce the diligent searcher via s 7(3) - in the form it stood before the 2001 amendments - meant it was necessary to identify a person skilled in the art in Australia.  It turns out that the short answer was "Yes", but there was in fact such a person ...

WIPO UDRP review 

WIPO has published its review of the operation of the UDRP for 2007 ...