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The Attorney-General has announced  that Justice Pat Keane will become the new Chief Justice of the Federal Court on the statutory retirement on 21 March of Chief JusticeMichael Black.

Justice Keane is currently a Justice of Appeal in Queensland and will become the third Chief Justice.

Announcement here.

Lid dip: Peter Clarke

IPwars is heading off into the sun, sand and the salty brine. Blogging will hopefully resume “on or about” Australia Day … more likely “about”.

In the meantime

Wishing you all the Compliments of the Season!

and a happy, healthy and safe 2010.

Due to the exigencies of my day job, it is unlikely that IPwars will be in a position to post with anything like a degree of frequency until after Cup Day.

Hope to see you at the other end of the tunnel!

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Selected microblog posts from the past week:

• Holman’s review David Koepsell – Who Owns You? The Corporate Gold Rush to Patent Your Genes http://ff.im/-7dK4P
• Patent Docs: Falsehoods, Distortions and Outright Lies in the Gene Patenting Debate http://ff.im/-7dK9H
• Koepsell fights back http://ff.im/-7dKek
• David Koepsell Doesn’t Know How to Cut His Losseshttp://ff.im/-7dKbE
• Patently-O: BRCA Gene Patents http://ff.im/-7mFuc

• Wyeth gets interloc. injunction in Australia against Alphapharm for alleged infringement of Efexor-XR patent:http://bit.ly/dvYwy
• Kenny J also rejects a higher threshold for interlocutory injunctions in patent cases http://bit.ly/SQViX ; Beecham doesn’t rule.

• RT @patentlyo: #Patent: Microsoft v. i4i: Briefing the Appeal http://digg.com/u1Bbhg

• RT @asilverstein: RT @bnatechlaw: Blogged Turning the Page on “Hyperwrap” Contracts http://bit.ly/Fv5hf

• How to Report Abuse to WordPress.com | PlagiarismToday http://ff.im/-733JQ
• RT @MegLG: Music Publishers Group Finally Sues Lyrics Sites 08/26/2009 http://ow.ly/lnOo
• the 1709 Copyright Blog: Knockback for record labels in US streaming decision http://ff.im/-73utR

• Pros and Cons of Stand-Alone Non-Verbal Logos and Other Trademark Styles: A Legal Perspective : Duets Bloghttp://ff.im/-73bMH
• RT @MegLG: Three Chocolate Companies Run Three Different Ways when it comes to TMs http://ow.ly/l2kyProperty, Intangible via @RonColeman

• EU wants to investigate patent quality and trade mark system (via IPKat) http://ff.im/-73vD3
• RT @mikk_IPR: Interactive Treaty Maphttp://www.pof.com.au/POFInteractiveMap. Berne Convention and WTO not included (yet?)
• At last … the 1709 Copyright Blog: Scottish court rules on jurisdiction regarding online infringementshttp://ff.im/-73c1h

Felix Oberholzer-Gee at Harvard and Koleman Strauss at Uni. of Kansas take an empirical look at the effect of file sharing on copyright industries.

They accept that file sharing has weakened copyright protection (although they are quite sceptical about the studies trying to prove this). They argue this is only part of the question, however, for policy-makers. They contend that, if the role of copyright is to provide incentives to create new works, it is necessary to look rather more widely.

For example, they note:

• the publishing of new books increased by 66%
• the number of new albums released more than doubled;
• the number of feature films produced has increased by 30%,

in the early years of the 21st century.

They also note that revenues from concert sales and merchandising and the like has also increased.

Exploring this, their tentative conclusion for policymakers:

The role of complements makes it necessary to adopt a broad view of markets when considering the impact of file sharing on the creative industries. Unfortunately, the popular press – and a good number of policy experts – often evaluate file sharing looking at a single product market. Analyzing trends in CD sales, for example, they conclude that piracy has wrecked havoc on the music business. This view confuses value creation and value capture. Record companies may find it more difficult to profitably sell CDs, but the broader industry is in a far better position. In fact, it is easy to make an argument that the business has grown considerably.

Download the pdf here.

Lid dip Joshua Gans

The ALRC has released a discussion paper outlining 65 proposals:

“to balance a growing commitment to increased openness and transparency in government with the legitimate need to maintain the secrecy and confidentiality of some Commonwealth information.”

Submissions should be made by a leisurely 7 August 2009.

According to the Media Briefing:

The chapters fall into four broad areas:

• • concepts and comparisons;
  • a general criminal secrecy offence;
  • specific secrecy offences; and
  • administrative duties, practices and procedures.

There are also chapters on the administrative obligations of the Public Service and fostering effective information handling practices.

(I guess that wouldn’t be: we can’t give you that for privacy reasons?).

Discussion paper here.

Media release

Media briefing paper

According to the IPKat, the ECJ has introduced an EU-wide law of unfair competition/tarnishment for registered trade marks in L’Oreal v Bellure.

Read more

Bennett J has dismissed the Bavarian Beer (trade) association’s opposition to the Dutch company, Bavaria NV’s application to register the Bavarian Beer trade mark.

Her Honour found:

182 In summary:

•  
  • The trade mark is inherently adapted to distinguish Bavaria NV’s goods from those of other traders and does so distinguish.
  • If the trade mark were only inherently adapted to distinguish Bavaria NV’s goods to some extent, there would be insufficient evidence to find it capable of distinguishing Bavaria NV’s goods pursuant to s 41(5) of the Act.
  • If the trade mark were not inherently adapted to distinguish Bavaria NV’s goods to any extent, there would be insufficient evidence to find it capable of distinguishing Bavaria NV’s goods pursuant to s 41(6) of the Act.
  • I am not satisfied that the trade mark connotes that Bavaria NV’s product comes from Bavaria or that it has certain characteristics attributable to a Bavarian origin. I am not satisfied that the use of the trade mark would be likely to deceive or cause confusion or that it would be contrary to law.
  • GENUINE BAVARIAN BEER and BAYERISCHES BEER are geographical indications for the purposes of ss 6 and 61 of the Act. Neither of these geographical indications equate with “Bavaria”. Section 61 does not refer to a sign that is substantially the same as or deceptively similar to a geographical indication. The trade mark does not contain a sign that is a geographical indication for the purposes of the Act.
  • Even if the trade mark did contain a sign that is a geographical indication for the purposes of the Act, Bavaria NV would succeed in raising the defence under s 61(2)(c) of the Act.
  • There is no discretion under s 55 of the Act to refuse to register a trade mark if none of the grounds of opposition are made out.

Professor Davison looks at the implications for (non-wine) GIs here.

I’ll just add that the Bavarians had argued s 55 of the Trade Marks Act conferred a discretion to block an application independently of the grounds of opposition. Hence the last bullet point above.

Of course, the last time I went to Europe, the Netherlands did seem to be quite some distance from Bavaria. I’m not sure what the status of the war (between the 2 sides) in Germany is.

Bennett J’s decision in Bavaria NV v Bayerischer Brauerbund eV [2009] FCA 428

Wolfram Alpha, a new search engine that attempts to answer questions, not “just” provide a list of potentially relevant websites.

According to the website:

You enter your question or calculation, and Wolfram|Alpha uses its built-in algorithms and growing collection of data to compute the answer. 

Perhaps rather more sexily, ask it what the answer to life, the universe and everything?

The Daily Telegraph has a video.

Lid dip, Joshua Gans (try his other examples).