Nottingham Law School graduation

I enjoyed the hugely gratifying experience of seeing many of my students from this past year receive their degrees a few weeks ago. Thanks to the wonders of modern technology it's all there on YouTube. And the vote of thanks at the end is great.

I can't begin to say how much they taught me!

Ferrari's TESTAROSSA trade mark under threat

According to international IP firm Novagraaf, Ferrari face a challenge to their registration of the trade mark TESTAROSSA. Autec AG of Nuremberg has applied to register an identical trade mark (in Germany, presumably) for bicycles (including e-bikes), and Ferrari's opposition has been rejected by the German courts on the grounds that the Italian manufacturer has not used its trade mark for more than five years. Non-use for five years or more makes a trade mark registration liable to revocation, and Autec is now seeking to have Ferrari's German and EU trade marks revoked.

Ferrari had argued that the trade mark was in use, as it was providing maintenance and repair services for the Testarossa - which it stopped making in 1996. But the court, crucially, held that in fact those services were marketed under the Ferrari brand not TESTAROSSA.

That seems quite correct to me. Trade marks perform several functions, not just the traditional origin-indicating one, but essentially a trade mark owner must use a trade mark to indicate the origin of its goods and services. TESTAROSSA in connection with servicing and repair is an indication of the purpose of the services, and should not support the registration of the trade mark for cars. There are 11 various registrations in Ferrari's name for TESTAROSSA (and quite a few in other people's names, hardly surprising given that the word could just as well be used for many different goods), but none of them are for services. Replacement parts are covered, but I suspect that the objection that they are sold under the Ferrari name not TESTAROSSA (and, if it be used at all, that designation is purely descriptive of the purpose of the goods) would apply here too.

A cautionary tale for owners of "heritage" (that is to say, old) trade marks. In the UK, perhaps they don't need to worry so much because an action for passing off might lie even if the trade mark were liable to revocation, but far better and cheaper to keep the trade mark in use, somehow. When the modern Testarossa was launched in 1984 its chosen name harked back to the 1957 Ferrari 250 sports racing car, and the name could similarly be recycled now to maintain protection. 

Intellectual property and competition law

Always an interesting topic ...

Hemphill, C. Scott, Intellectual Property and Competition Law (May 9, 2017). Forthcoming, Oxford Handbook of Intellectual Property Law (Rochelle C. Dreyfuss & Justine Pila eds. 2017). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2965617 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2965617

And another article of interest:

Lim, Daryl, Retooling the Patent-Antitrust Intersection: Insights from Behavioral Economics (April 14, 2017). 69 Baylor Law Review 124 (2017). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2953031

"The Great Intellectual Property Trade-Off"

Tim Harford ("The Undercover Economist") is, I find, always worth reading, and here is his take on the intellectual property system via the BBC (the website article is based on a programme on the World Serve). Nothing new in saying that there is a trade-off involved in the intellectual property system, of course, we have known that for a long time, but it's good to see it aired in this way. The chilling effect of James Watt's steam engine patents is interesting, and I hadn't fully appreciated that before (nor that Watt also suffered because of other patents). Remember though that the patent system was in its infancy in those days, and modern patent legislation is unlikely to allow this to be repeated.

Mr Harford cites "the economists Michele Boldrin and David Levine". ("The economists"? Surely there are more than two?) Their book Against Intellectual Monopoly can be downloaded from here. They are from Washington University of St. Louis, Economics Department, and have done a lot of work on the economics of intellectual property (though what bears a date seems to be ten or more years old). The idea of the book is intriguing, but I am somewhat concerned about the lack of information about publishers - of course self-publication is perfectly respectable, but I'd like to see something objective to enable me to judge whether to spend time reading it (or to suggest my students read it). At first glance, it looks like a popular rather than a scholarly work. It lacks footnotes, though there are extensive notes at the end of each chapter. I would also like to know when it was written - I haven't found a reference to a source later than 2005 yet. Mr Harford should give his readers a bit more information, although I don't expect high levels of academic rigour in his work (that's one of its attractions). When I read more of the book I will write more about it.

And while I am writing about the BBC - "The Bottom Line" on Radio 4, presented by Evan Davis, had a recent episode entitled "Corporate Espionage". It's currently available to download as a podcast here. It features serial inventor and entrepreneur Mandy Haberman, patent attorney Vicki Salmon and investigator-cum-author Chris Morgan Jones. Different intellectual property rights get a little confused but it's definitely worth listening to.

Google in record fine for abuse of dominant position

Google has been fined a record €2.42 billion (more than twice as much as expected, and indeed twice as much as the "bung" given by the UK government to persuade the DUP to maintain it in office) for abusing its dominant position, contrary to Article 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. The Commission found that the search engine gave illegal prominence to Google's comparison shopping service. Unless it terminates the abuse within 90 days, the company will become liable to daily penalty payments up to 5% of the global turnover Google's parent, Alphabet.

The competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said:

Google has come up with many innovative products and services that have made a difference to our lives. That's a good thing. But Google's strategy for its comparison shopping service wasn't just about attracting customers by making its product better than those of its rivals. Instead, Google abused its market dominance as a search engine by promoting its own comparison shopping service in its search results, and demoting those of competitors.
What Google has done is illegal under EU antitrust rules. It denied other companies the chance to compete on the merits and to innovate. And most importantly, it denied European consumers a genuine choice of services and the full benefits of innovation.

The Commission keeps imposing record fines on technology companies. In 2009 it fined a record Intel €1.06 billion for paying manufacturers and a retailer to favour its products over those of AMD, surpassing the €497 million penalty imposed on Microsoft in 2004. There's a brief survey of the eight biggest fines imposed on technology companies for breaches of EU competition rules on the Computer Business review website here. And there is, I think, an outstanding investigation into another abuse by Google involving Google Play and the Google search engine being installed on smartphones. There's also the Commission's state aid case involving the Irish tax authorities and Apple. So many that commentators write about the EU being at war with Silicon Valley - which just happens to be where many of the dominant firms come from (and incidentally a long way from Redmond, WA). The fact remains, however, that there is an interesting phenomenon here as the law on abuse of dominant position (and the penalties for breaches) develops. The fact is, the technology sector offers huge scope for abuses of one sort or another.

There's too much to do to write more about the Google decision right now but I will get back to the story later. If you want to know more here is the Commission's press release. There's also an interesting Fact Sheet. And, with a hat-tip to Warwick Rothnie's IPwars.com blog, Ben Thomposon's comments on Stratechery.com are also well worth reading. I found them very eye-opening.

India: Balancing Competition - SEP Injunctions

SEP Injunctions and the Balance of IPRs and Competition in India is a posting on the IP finance blog by Mike Mireles, linking to an article in the Financial Express by Professor V.K. Unni of the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta entitled 'Promoting Innovation: Moving Towards a Better Intellectual Property Regime'. 

The balance between IP rights and competition law is of course a crucial one to lawyers in either of (or, more likely, both) those disciplines. The learned Professor notes that the the Delhi High Court has recently considered whether the competition authorities are entitled to consider possible abuses of dominant positions by owners of standards-essential patents, and has concluded that they can, which sounds rather like the process that the Court of Justice went through many years ago to reconcile the provisions of the (then) Treaty of Rome with national intellectual property laws. But it's not for me to tell you what IP Finance, or Prof Unni, said - follow the link and read it for yourself. As my students might find themselves doing next year ...

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Theft: A History of Music

Thinking about how to engage students coming to intellectual property law for the first time is something that occupies my thoughts quite a lot these days. A copyright comic might be just the answer - and if it deals mostly with the law from that other common law jurisdiction across the Atlantic, that's not necessarily a disadvantage if the purpose of the exercise is to kindle interest rather than teach hard law. And if it has "theft" in the title I will be prepared to suspend my usual reaction to the connection of that concept with intellectual property.

A large part of grabbing a student's attention is finding a route into intellectual property law from somewhere they already know and like. Music provides an excellent entrée into copyright law - probably not Mozart, but possibly some of the more recent and high-profile cases, the two most celebrated of which were US cases (but there are many from the UK too). Music copyright is precisely what James Boyle and Jennifer Jenkins’ new scholarly comic book tells us about. It is (the blurb tells us) 'a celebration of these and other musicians and composers who crossed barriers and built the playlist of extraordinary Western music from ancient Greece to classical to hip-hop. Published by the Duke Center for the Study of the Public Domain, “Theft: A History of Music,” brings these artists’ musical borrowings to the forefront, saying that instead of stifling creativity, such “thefts” were essential to musical cross-fertilization and creation of new genres.'

The blurb continues: 'But the book also comes with a warning: At every point of new musical innovation, there was resistance and efforts to control music, whether it was from philosophers, the church, or politicians.'

You can read the full article here, and listen to James Boyle discuss the comic on NPR's The State of Things. The mere fact that it's the work (partly) of Jim Boyle is enough to sell it to me: he's an excellent writer and lecturer and I have enjoyed his work in the past, although this is the first comic book of his that I have read (the first comic book of any kind that I've read, since I gave up "war bluds" at school). I read it, pretty much in one sitting, and found it stimulating, entertaining and informative. It's going to be an ideal introduction to copyright concepts in courses I teach in the future, and best of all (coming as it does from individuals and an institution committed to the furtherance of the public domain) it's a free download. What  more could you ask?

Positional goods

Many things bother me about the state of the world. One idea that made a deep impression on me when I first read about it in "Social Limits to Growth" by the  late Fred Hirsch is what he called positional goods. I took a couple of Prof Hirsch's courses at Warwick, and learnt a great deal from them (I could have learnt a great deal more, but a memo from him tucked inside my copy of "Social Limits" explains why I didn't: it starts "I don't seem to have been seeing you at the seminar lately ..."). I bought his books, and remember struggling to read "Social Limits" during a sleepless night at the British Grand Prix at Brands Hatch, when camping in a tent brought on an attack of asthma and I spent several hours sitting in the Hillman Avenger in which my brother and I had travelled to the event. But I digress - except that this explains why my attempt to read the book were less than successful.

I did, however, take on board the idea that there are limits to growth. If everyone moves to the countryside because it's pretty and quiet, it will cease to be pretty and quiet. This is happening right now all around me. And contemplating what I think JK Galbraith identified as the problem of private affluence and public poverty (highlighted by the appalling death toll in the Grenfell Tower fire, which must have at least something to do with the public sector being starved of money), I wonder how the super-rich imagine they will derive any pleasure from their wealth if, as they travel between their City base and their place in the country, they have to negotiate traffic jams and potholed roads, or a rail system brought to a halt by defective signals or a "jumper" (a "person under a train", in official language). Even if they fly, they will see plumes of smoke from burning tower blocks. Not every day, of course, but once in a decade is much too often.

So, houses in the countryside are positional goods. They rely for their value on scarcity. This thought brought me to something else which has troubled me for years (though it is not something that would ever bring about the end of the world*), namely parallel imports of luxury goods. Trade mark owners resist parallel imports because they interfere with their pricing strategy, which is based on maintaining exclusivity, which means that luxury branded goods are positional goods like country cottages. Consumers - some of them, anyway - want to be able to buy them cheap from Tesco, but the whole point about positional goods is that if they are available cheap from Tesco they are no longer worth having.

Hirsch also wrote about the commercialization effect (and yes, he did spell it with a "z"), under which supplying something commercially diminishes the quality of a good or service. Or, to put it another way (as Wikipedia does) "market exchange ... diminishes the inherent value of the transaction by subordinating social well-being to the commodification impulse." And that leads me to think about commodification (a topic on which Marx had a lot to say), which seems to me to be what intellectual property law is all about - taking intangible creations and turning them into something that can be traded. There's a lot to think about here, and I think it is now high time I read the book (which I notice I bought in 1980 at the bookshop at Conservative Central Office, and that in itself raises some interesting questions).

* Although as my old friend - as in, he was a friend a long time ago, but I have not seen him for many years - Sir Michael Fallon once said, "it's not the end of the world - but you can see it from there". No, I won't tell you of where he was speaking.

The Oxford Comma

Although it is certainly not a point of interest only to intellectual property lawyers, this cautionary tale is as relevant to us as it is to any other species of lawyer. The Oxford (or "serial") comma is often considered to be of interest only to the worst sort of pedant (though "pedant" isn't actually a bad thing to be at all, not on the proper meaning of the word). It can however be crucial to the interpretation of a piece of writing - as a company in Maine found out recently.
Relying on a statute which exempted from an obligation to pay overtime to employees engaged in “canning, processing, preserving, freezing, drying, marketing, storing, packing for shipment or distribution" of certain perishable products, it did not pay overtime to employees engaged solely in distribution. The District Court decided that distribution was a "stand-alone exempt activity", but the Court of Appeals for the First Circuit found that the lack of a serial comma to mark off the last listed activity meant that the provision was ambiguous. The state's default rule of construction required the court to resolve the ambiguity in favour of the beneficiaries of the exemption, namely the drivers. So, for want of an Oxford comma, the drivers got their overtime payments.
It wasn't that the court decided that the absence of the comma was in itself determinative: and I think it would clearly have been wrong had it so decided. To give the words the meaning contended for by the employers, it would have been necessary to obey the rules about parallel construction, inserting a conjunction (in this case "or") between "storing" and "packing", to make clear that "packing for shipment or distribution" was one activity. But how often do you see that rule obeyed?
Thanks to Thomson Reuters Legal Solutions Blog for alerting me to the story.

Eminem in dispute about use of music in NZ party's election campaign

The amount of trouble that using popular music for election campaigns causes seems to be limitless. Not every party can rely on Lord Lloyd Webber to arrange some conveniently out-of-copyright Purcell for the occasion (though the Rondeau from Abdelazar is better known as the theme used by Benjamin Britten for his Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra, which makes it a strange choice for a Conservative Party campaign tune though it's certainly stirring enough). It features at the end of this election broadcast from 1992 - which is worth watching in itself, I think, reminding us of a very different political era.

New Zealand's National Party, for a campaign in 2014, didn't try Lord Lloyd Webber, but instead went for a piece called "Eminem-esque", which it bought from a stock music purveyor. An odd choice of artist, and genre, for a centre-right party to associate with, you might think, and it gets worse because unfortunately for the Nationalist Party it sounds very like Eminem's song "Lose Yourself" - an even more unwelcome association, you'd have thought: alluding to any song with the word "lose" in the title can't be a good idea. As the BBC reports, it has led to a copyright infringement suit. You can hear both pieces played in court here. Neither has the judge dancing in the aisle, and I'm left with the feeling that I would want to punish any political party that inflicted either piece on me. But that's not the point.

There are more and more cases like this coming to the courts - not the English courts, necessarily (I can't think of any cases like this) but there are plenty of others from elsewhere, whether involving politicians or not. There's a recent piece about it on IP Watch which mentions a new "scholarly comic book" (what an interesting concept) by James Boyle and Jennifer Jenkins, about which I am going to post separately.

In the last couple of years there's been Led Zeppelin v Spirit and Marvin Gaye (the estate of) v  Robin Thicke and Pharrell WilliamsAs a recent programme on BBC Radio 4 showed, there is a lot of activity in the area - with a new profession of forensic musicologist emerging as an important part of the picture. The fear of being sued for copyright infringement has a significant chilling effect on creativity, and especially on improvisation. A consequence of the fact that control doesn't lie with the musicians, but with the suits of the record company, and an illustration of how big business isn't content with the limited exclusive rights given by the copyright system, but strives to turn them into a true monopoly.

But back to the story ... The Nationalist Party seems to have taken the view that, if there were a copyright problem, it was the stock library's problem rather than theirs. I doubt New Zealand copyright law is different enough from ours to make that proposition any less risible than it would be if trotted out by an infringer here. Whether "Eminem-esque" does infringe copyright in "Lose Yourself" is another matter, but it does seem like a strong possibility.

Debate rages over controversial copyright standard for the web

New Scientist reports that a new standard that is intended to enable web browsers to deal with digital rights management software is proving controversial. The Encrypted Media Extensions mechanism replaces browser plugins, which have a bad track record for security. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is seeking to standardise EME, to avoid compatibility problems across different browsers.

The controversy stems from fears that EME might introduce security flaws into browsers, and as tampering with DRM systems is illegal under many countries' laws (including the USA and EU Member States) researchers will not be able to check for bugs.

With the widespread use of DRM, without which film studios would not make their products available on services such as Netflix and Amazon, take-up by the browser-makers is unavoidable, and W3C's approval almost inevitable. But standardisation is often the enemy of innovation: and in this case, it might also be the enemy of security.



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How much intellectual property is a good thing?

The World Intellectual Property Organisation tells us that it was a Record Year for International Patent Applications in 2016 and that there was "strong demand" for international trade marks and registered designs. Applicants from the U.S. led the patents field, as they have done for 39 years, with Japan second and China third. “In an interlinked, knowledge-based global economy, creators and innovators are increasingly relying on intellectual property to promote and protect their competitive edge around the world,” said Director General Francis Gurry, which actually strikes me as such a bland statement that it was hardly worth saying. Of course there is no way of measuring success qualitatively, so a crude quantitative measure is the only one available, but even so it is surely a mistake to consider more patent applications to be unequivocally a good thing.

The days when patents protected big inventions passed a long time ago. I doubt that any of last year's PCT applications were for today's equivalent of the steam engine or the hovercraft, or even the dual-cyclone vacuum cleaner. There might be a blockbuster drug in there somewhere, and that should be a matter for celebration when (and if) it becomes apparent, but the mere fact that thousands of patent applications have been filed is meaningless in terms of technological development and benefit to human kind (although one can understand why patent agents, patent attorneys and patent office bureaucrats might be pleased). Please don't confuse the number of patent filings with the amount of innovative activity in the world - much of it is probably mobile phone companies building their portfolios, the better to defend themselves (or counter-attack) when they are sued for infringement by their competitors. Not an edifying use of the intellectual property system, IMHO. But applauding the number of applications rather than the real achievements of patent protection is another symptom of the modern disease of confusing means and ends.

One interesting fact emerges from reading to the end of the press release: the Hague Agreement is most-used for furniture designs, and the leading user of it is a Dutch company. Who'd have thought? But then again, who'd bother with a registered design to start with? What is there in furniture design that's truly novel? No doubt I am missing something ...

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Famous Hartlepudlians

When I was an articled clerk (for the benefit of young people, this was what we used to call trainee solicitors) in Teesside (not, trademarksandbrandsonline.com note, "Teeside"), and many of the firm's clients frequented the crown court there, it was scarcely imaginable that it would be the venue for a copyright case. But there was nothing criminal in the copyright law in those days, so no reason for the idea to cross our minds.
Now a man from my home town - indeed, a short distance from my old family home, from a road down which we walked the dog every evening - has been convicted of an offence under (presumably) section 297A of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, having advertised and sold adapted IPTV boxes - which were designed to enable users to receive encrypted broadcasts without paying the broadcaster for the privilege. As well as a ten-month "bender", as I recall suspended sentences were called in the days of my articles (his sentence being suspended for 12 months), a Proceeds of Crime Order required him to pay £80,000 and costs of £170,000 were also awarded against him. Painful.
The prosecution was brought by Hartlepool Trading Standards department, following an investigation by the National Trading Standards North East Enforcement Team. The original referral came from FACT, which appears now to be the full name of what was the Federation against Copyright Theft - one of those organisations whose names make me cringe but who do, at least sometimes, a good and useful job. Mr Mayes, the defendant, had been caught selling these boxes to pubs and clubs all over the place, placing advertisements which claimed they were "100% legal". He charged £1,000 each, which is probably an attractive price compared with the fee a broadcaster would charge for the sort of public showing licence a pub or club would need. The FACT report (https://www.fact-uk.org.uk/seller-ordered-to-pay-250000-for-illegal-tv-boxes/) says that often they didn't even work - perhaps his business model relied on the customers not going legal over something which was pretty clearly illegal, whatever his advertising stated.
Trademarks and Brands Online's report, which is where I first read about the case but which contains nothing not in FACT's press release except the misspelling, is here.

India: The Trademark Rules, 2017: Process made simpler, Faster, Start-up friendly but dearer

In a constructive attempt to streamline, simplify and expedite the trademark registration processes, the Trade Mark Rules, 2017 have been notified and came into effect from March 6th 2017. In consonance with the National IPR Policy, 2016, the Rules also introduce specific provisions for Start-Ups and Small Enterprises to stimulate and promote innovation and creativity among such entities.

The Salient Features of the Rules are as follows:

GENERAL:

• Definition of Start-Ups and Small Enterprise introduced.
• Number of Forms has been reduced from 74 to 8. 
• Procedures relating to registration as Registered User of trademarks have been simplified. 
• Provisions have been introduced to serve all applications, notices, statements and other documents electronically - from applicants to the Registry and vice-versa.

OFFICIAL FEES:

• Government Fee applicable for various trademark registration related activities has been simplified by reducing the number of entries to just 23. 
• Filing fee of a new application has been increased by about 125 %. (INR 9,000.00).
• Renewal fee increased close to 100% (INR 10,000.00). 
• Fee for expedited registration process increased by 100% (INR 40,000.00).
• Handling fee for Madrid Applications increased by 150% (INR 5,000.00).
• 50% discount on the new filing fee for Individuals/Start-Ups/Small Enterprise. 
• To promote e-filing, the fee for online filing has been kept 10% lower as compared to fees for physical filing.
• Fee for extra characters (beyond 500 characters) in the description of goods/services has been done away with.

EXPEDITED PROCESSING OF APPLICATIONS:

Provisions laid down for expediting the registration from filing through registration on payment of higher fees. Earlier, only examination of application could be expedited.

REPRESENTATION OF SOUND MARKS:

Sound marks applications to be also accompanied by reproduction in MP3 format (not exceeding thirty seconds’ length).

EXPEDITE OPPOSITION PROCEEDINGS:

• Provision to file counter statement to the notice of opposition as soon as it is made available online. 
• The requirement of serving a copy of opposition notice shall be dispensed with if a counterstatement has already been filed based on electronic copy of notice available online. 
• No scope for seeking extensions in case of filing evidences. 
• The number of adjournments for hearings reduced to 2 for each party and each adjournment shall not be allowed for more than 30 days.
• Mandatory costs up to INR 10,000.00 to be awarded to either the Applicant or the Opponent (depending on the case) for not contesting opposition proceedings thereafter. 

WELL-KNOWN TRADEMARKS:

• Modalities for determination of a trademark as a well-known mark have been introduced for the first time. 
• Application to be filed with an exorbitant fee of INR 1,00,000.00 per mark and only through e-filing.

VIDEO-CONFERENCING OF HEARINGS:

Provisions have been laid down to hold personal hearing through video- conferencing or other audio-visual communication devices.

RENEWAL OF REGISTRATION:

The window for renewal of registration now opens one year prior to the date of expiration as against six months under the old Rules.

EXTENSION OF TIME:

Any extension of time, as specifically allowed under the Trademarks Act, 1999, shall not exceed one month.

ASSIGNMENT OF TRADEMARKS:

• Providing a duly certified copy of original document, instrument or deed purporting to transfer the title will suffice; an original instrument or deed is no longer necessary. 
• Filing of Affidavit along with the application for recordal of assignment is no longer required. 

STATEMENT OF USE:

• All applications (except with the intent to use) shall contain a statement of use with respect to ALL goods or services mentioned in the application.
• An affidavit testifying such use (if application claimed prior user date) along with the supporting documents has to be filed.

Land Rover defends the DEFENDER trade mark

There are few vehicles as iconic and instantly recognisable as the classic Land Rover. It has captivated car enthusiasts for decades, and has appeared in several mainstream action films such as The Expendables, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, and in somewhat of a modified form in James Bond: Spectre. It is no coincidence that the vehicle has appeared in such films, as its heavy duty, military like structure gives an impression of assertiveness, functionality, efficiency and reliability.

To the dismay of many, Jaguar Land Rover discontinued production of the Land Rover Defender in January 2016. However, it did not discontinue the trade mark registrations which protects the model name. Instead, it is working on a replacement, although traditionalists are expressing doubts about whether it will be worthy of bearing the same name.

Jaguar had registered two trade marks for DEFENDER, these being a UK mark registered in 1989 for ''motor land vehicles and parts and fittings therefor; all included in class 12'' and an EU trade mark registered in 2014 for ''land vehicles; motor vehicles; motor land vehicles''.

A Canadian Company called Bombardier marketed a recreational off-road vehicle under the name ''Defender''. Jaguar alleged that this infringed their trade mark under Regulation 207/2009 art.9(2) of the Trade Marks Act 1994, on the basis that it would lead to a position of (1) double identity and (2) likelihood of confusion.

Bombardier only defended the former claim as they had no defence to the infringement action. They issued a counterclaim for partial revocation on the ground of non-use for five years under Section 46(1)(a) of the Trade Marks Act 1994.

They also argued that the trade mark was invalid under Regulation 207/2009 art.52(1)(b) and Section 47, as its scope contained too wide a specification of goods and services. The purpose of this argument was to establish that the trade mark had been registered in bad faith, a tactical move on Bombardier's part.

Issue 1 - Partial Revocation for Non-Use

Bombardier began by arguing that Jaguar Land Rover had only used the DEFENDER mark for part of the class in which it was registered, namely on the single Defender series only, despite being registered for ''Land Vehicles; Motor vehicles; motor land vehicles; parts and fittings for vehicles''.

However, the defendant could not attack the EU trade mark for non-use. It was filed in 2014 and the five-year period had not elapsed. The judge therefore did not consider the matter any further, as even if the UK trade mark were to be revoked the EU claim would still lie.

Issue 2 - The UK Act vs the EU Regulation - Partial Revocation on grounds of bad faith

Bombardier alleged that Jaguar Land Rover had made their application in bad faith, on the basis that they did not intend to use the mark DEFENDER for any other land or motor vehicle except to the models they had applied it to.

Unlike the domestic Trade Marks Act 1994 which requires an applicant for registration of a UK trade mark to make a declaration of use or intention under Section 32(2), the EU Regulation does not require that the applicant must be using or have a bona fide intention to use a trade mark. Therefore, invalidity on the grounds of bad faith could not be established in respect of the EU trade mark.

Nugee J clearly felt somewhat constrained as there was a conflict between the UK Act and the EU regulation. He referred to comments made by Jacob J, who in Laboratoire De La Mer Trade Marks [2005] EWCA Civ 978 said that ''there is simply no deterrent to applicants seeking very wide specifications of goods or services…with all the greater potential for conflict that may give rise to''. He then went on to say that it would be a strange position for somebody to be able to ''register a mark when he has no intention whatsoever of using it''.

However, Nugee J went on to say that because the matter was concerned with the Regulation, the Court was bound by it by virtue of Section 3(1) and Schedule 1 of the European Communities Act 1972 and Article 19(1) of the Treaty on the European Union.

Issue 3 - Was Jaguar in bad faith?

Nugee J analysed the legislation and the relevant authorities, and arrived at the conclusion that ''neither the Regulation nor the case law provides a basis that would enable the court to find that there is bad faith in view of the size of the list of goods and services in the application''. There, the partial revocation claim on the grounds of bad faith failed, affording no defence to the double identity infringement.

Issue 4 - Was the EU application made in bad faith?

Due to the ''expressions of disquiet'' of other judges, Nugee J then felt he had to consider what is exactly is meant by bad faith for the purposes of EU trade mark law, and particularly whether Jaguar was in bad faith in this respect.

In the case of Trillium (Case C000053447/1, March 28, 2000), the Cancellation Division helpfully defined bad faith for these purposes as ''the opposite of good faith''. Although that provides an inadequate consolation as to its meaning, they went further, explaining that it ''generally implies or involves, but is not limited to, actual or constructive fraud, or a design to mislead or deceive''.

Nugee J then went on to highlight the severity of a claim of bad faith and that the burden is on the defendant (the accuser) to prove it. Where a defendant seeks to establish that a claimant has acted in bad faith by applying for an unduly broad specification but is unable to establish a narrower specification which the claimant should have registered, the accusation will be ''manifestly unsustainable''. Despite attempts to do so, Bombardier could not establish a narrower specification, and as a result their claim failed.

Jaguar Land Rover Ltd v Bombardier Recreational Products Inc [2016] EWHC B37 (Ch) (08 November 2016)

The National Guild of Removers And Storers Ltd v Bee Moved Ltd & Ors; why the court couldn’t Bee Moved on both parts of the claim

In December last year, the Intellectual Property Enterprise Court gave judgement in proceedings for passing off brought by the National Guild of Removers and Storers against ex Guild member, Bee Moved Ltd and its two director-shareholders ([2016] EWHC 3192 (IPEC)). The claim had two parts. The first concerned an alleged misrepresentation on the defendant’s website which led customers to believe that the defendant was a Guild member. This impression was created through a ‘moving checklist’ featured on the defendant’s website targeted directly at customers. The checklist gave customers advice which included to ‘check the fine print in your moving insurance’ but most importantly, ‘use a removal company who is a member of the National Guild of Removers and Storers.’ The defendant was unable to identify anything on the website which clarified this bullet point and showed that first defendant was not a member of the claimant.

The defendants relied on evidence given by the claimant in cross-examination accepting that all Guild members either expressly state membership or use the claimant’s logo to convey membership. The defendants sought to argue any member of the public would notice the absence of the claimant’s logo and therefore not conclude any trade connection had been established. The court held that it hadn’t been established that the public would even notice the absence of such logo on the defendants’ advertising. The judge could not Bee Moved on this part of the claim and held the implied representation was damaging to the claimant’s business and goodwill.

The court dismissed the second part of the claim showing they could Bee Moved in relation to this issue. The claim related to a further advertisement that was published on a third party’s website. The difference was that this advertisement expressly stated the defendant’s membership of the Guild. However, this statement had appeared by accident as a system failure caused the website to replicate itself from an earlier version. The judge accepted that when the advertisement was initially submitted to the website, the defendant was a Guild member. Therefore, as the defendants didn't intend for the third party to show the advertisement or even be aware the advertisement was being shown, they couldn't be held liable.

The claimant’s case on passing off succeeded against all three defendants in relation to the first part of the claim and failed on the second.

Unified Patent Court Agreement under threat?

It had to happen: the xenophobic press has noticed (courtesy of Douglas Carswell MP, the sole UKIP member in the House of Commons, who has tabled an Early Day Motion) that however hard Brexit may be it presently does not involve trashing the Unified Patent Court Agreement. Now that the Daily Express is reportedly on the case (see Intellectual Asset Management's report - I could not bring myself to investigate that rag's website, still less to drive traffic to it), I don't give much for the Agreement's future. I am amazed that, after all the hard work creating the Agreement (and all the other good stuff that has come out of the EU - of which even its sternest critic, if apprised of the facts, would surely agree there is some, even if it's only compensation for delayed flights), anyone should think it is a good use of scarce resources to undo it all and recreate something new that probably won't look very much different. Although, of course, the Unified Patent Court, by definition, isn't something the UK could do by itself.

Bulgarian radio in licensing dispute, relying on out-of-copyright music

Copyright spat forces Bulgaria radio to play old tunes, reports BBC News. Musicautor, the collecting society, is reported to be demanding three times as much in royalties as before - to bring it into line with other EU countries, it claims. The broadcaster says it can't afford to pay that much without damaging the service it offers.



Not all copyright music is off the air in Bulgaria, though. Dancho (or is it Jordan?) Karadjov, frontman of Bulgarian rock band Signal, isn't a member of Musicautor and hasn't been since 1990, and is letting the station broadcast his latest solo album, a copy of which he gave to the radio station's director. He obviously feels a debt to the radio station for the help it gave the band decades ago - in the 80s when I imagine that it wasn't very easy to be a Bulgarian rock musician. Although listening to my first piece of Signal music (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2U5jSxxUCWc - the title translates as "Farewell" which might indicate that I should have found somewhere else to start) I'm not sure that "rock musician" is quite the right expression. Perhaps I should dig deeper - but do I really want or need to become familiar with Bulgarian rock?



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Duran Duran and reversion of copyright

BBC News reports that the popular music combination Duran Duran have lost a claim in the High Court in which their music publishers sought to prevent them from serving notice to recover their U.S. copyright. Gloucester Place Music Ltd v Le Bon & Ors [2016] EWHC 3091 (Ch) (02 December 2016) is a relatively short (45 paragraph) judgment of Mr Justice Arnold, in his own words 'not without hesitation'. But there was little that he could do: the contract seems pretty clear. The various copyrights (and I don't like using the plural, though it seems appropriate here) were assigned for their full term, and to try to use section 203 of the U.S. Copyright Act to reclaim the rights after the statutory 35 years was contrary to the terms of the contract and amounted to a derogation from grant (reminding me again of BL v Armstrong, which I have been making my students in Nottingham read recently - it's good for the soul).

But surely (I hear you say) the statute overrides the contract? The right to a reversion of the copyright can't be contracted out of, can it? It seems that it can't - at least, on my reading of the provision, and perhaps a friend in the States will comment on this - but the parties went off to court under Part 8 on the basis that there was no dispute about the facts of the case, and the effect of the foreign law is a question of fact: and accordingly the defendants did not seek to adduce evidence evidence about U.S. law. Arnold J was asked only to interpret the contract, and that didn't create much difficulty for him.

It seems from the judgment that the defendants also failed to raise in the proper way a public policy point - although the learned judge indicated that he wasn't receptive to it anyway. There seems some merit in saying that an English-law contract, in which the parties agreed that the English courts should have jurisdiction, should not be allowed to interfere with the operation of a foreign statute.

Finally, the band members, quoted by the BBC, were miffed that they were suffering under a contract signed when they were young and innocent - a common complaint in the entertainment business, so much so that by 1980, when they signed up with the publisher, lawyers would take great care to make the contracts bulletproof. Their argument loses a lot of force, though, when you read the opening paragraphs of the judgment and learn that the 1980 contract had been terminated in 1983 and replaced with contracts with the band members' service companies. They might have been young still in 1983, but they were less innocent and presumably well-advised.

European Parliament committee supports cross-border portability of online films

The Legal Affairs Committee (Press Release) of the European Parliament has supported a proposed regulation that will allow subscribers to online film services to watch them wherever they are in the European Union. Another of those benefits of EU membership that some of the 17 million will miss when it's gone, I expect.

Dictionary of Intellectual Property Law, second edition

I am about to start in earnest on a second edition of the Dictionary - so this is your opportunity to let me know what I should include. Headings only thank you - I am not seeking complete entries. Writing the definitions is my job - and it's what gives me enjoyment, especially when someone says to me "I didn't realise you were so funny!". I can't think of anything that any other person has ever said to me that has given me so much pleasure ...

Rubik's Cube shape trade mark invalid

Rubik's eponymous Cube, surely one of the most well-known and distinctive shapes on the planet, has been deprived of protection - if you believe what you read in the press. Even The Guardian, which in an age of increasingly unreliable journalism has become the source of my regular fix (not being paywalled like the FT, which would otherwise be my preference), has succumbed. In fact the Court of Justice's decision seems like a perfectly good application of the rules that are designed to ensure that trade mark protection does not protect function. The Court of Justice ruled: “In examining whether registration ought to be refused on the ground that shape involved a technical solution, EUIPO and the General Court should also have taken into account non-visible functional elements represented by that shape, such as its rotating capability.”

You might argue that it leans a little too far in the direction of liberality (that is, excluding shapes from protection), as I think I would - should the internal workings of the article really be taken into account? - but the basic rule is a good one. It is also, I think, relevant to ask whether the shape performs a trade mark function - is it an indication of source or origin, or merely the shape of the object? The argument (mentioned in The Guardian's article) that the rights owners should rely on patent protection is also sound, but as the Cube was invented over 40 years ago this suggestion does little but draw attention to the fact that patent protection might be too short (and an arbitrary 20 year term is sure to be too short for some inventions, too long for others).

Actually, were the patent system to give Ernő Rubik's invention that much protection, it would be failing in its main purpose - to encourage innovation. It works, paradoxically, by giving innovators limited exclusive rights, after which anyone who wants to do so can work the invention. During the lifetime of the patent the inventor can make a lot of money (or, of course, none at all) but once it has gone, it has gone. Others must be free to make their own cubes - the interests of society would not be served if cheap alternatives were not available.

Where the commentators err is in treating the loss of the shape trade mark as a disaster. In fact it is a bit of evergreening too far. The trade mark system should not be used to protect technical shapes: they should be freely available to other manufacturers once patent and design protection has expired. We should all be able to buy alternative cubes. What we cannot do - because a large portfolio of trade marks still ensures this - is buy Rubik's Cubes from any other source. And that is how it should be.

Should've refused it

So the Trade Marks Registry has accepted Specsavers' application number 3175246 to register SHOULD'VE and (even more bizarrely) SHOULDVE (series of two: see here). And of course in line with modern (absolutist) practice it covers several classes of goods and services, some of them fair enough but others (retail services, printed matter), unqualified by reference to any particular sector, far too wide - tending towards patent-type monopoly protection over an ordinary English expression.

It's not as if Specsavers BV were short of protection. They have EU trade mark no 4694551 already, for SHOULD'VE GONE TO SPECSAVERS. Even taking account of the lunacy of Brexit, or "Eurocide" as I saw it called in The Guardian this morning, which will require proprietors of EU trade marks to obtain (by some mechanism about which we are yet to be told) separate UK protection, this new application would be wholly unnecessary in any truly rational trade mark system. Indeed, if the system worked rationally rather than promoting trade mark fetishism, the application would have been rejected out of hand. Not only can the word - whether correctly punctuated or not - never be distinctive enough to function as a trade mark: the applicant simply isn't using it as one. It is not the trade mark. It is one of the four or five words (depending on how you count contractions) which together comprise their trade mark. Alone, it should not have received more than a couple of nanoseconds' attention from the Registry.

I don't criticise the applicant for trying to get protection if the law will give it: nor do I criticise the agents who filed the application, who are obliged to serve their clients to the best of their ability. Specsavers has shareholders who will demand the strongest possible protection for its assets, including trade marks. I will however criticise both the applicant and the agent for making a series of two marks by adding an incorrect variant - especially given that, if an infringer used it, a judge would surely hold it so similar to the correctly-punctuated contraction as to cause a likelihood of confusion. In fact, the apostrophe might even be considered to be an insignificant detail which would not be noticed by the average consumer, so SHOULDVE would be treated as identical with SHOULD'VE. Given that "its" and "it's" are commonly treated as identical, that appalling possibility seems very real.

I do however criticise the law, which should never countenance granting exclusive rights like this. It panders to the wishes of the absolutists, who want the strongest possible protection for all their intellectual property, and fails to strike a balance between their interests and those of new entrants trying to find a trade mark which they can use, and ultimately of consumers too. The EU had an opportunity recently to make some repairs to a broken system, but with this acceptance the Trade Marks Registry has (IMHO) broken it a bit more.

Philip Glass on copyright

An insight into the importance of copyright to creative people, specifically composers (or at least one composer) but applicable to others whom the copyright legislation refers to as "authors". Read it here.

Repair clause referred to Court of Justice

My great friend David Musker reports on the Class 99 blog that a court in Milan has referred to the Court of Justice (how nice to see the institution being identified by the correct name!) for an interpretation of the repair clause (Article 110 of the EU designs regulation, No 6/2002). The questions asked - of which there are two - are (as is so often the case, partly I suspect as a result of their having been translated into English) pretty incomprehensible. Why do these questions so often have to ask if something is "precluded"? In BMW v Round and Metal, to which David's article refers, Arnold J, in a judgment that epitomises the adjective "Arnoldian", rejected the proposition that the defendant's alloy wheels fell within the scope of the repair clause: they were sold not as straight replacements but as alternatives, with different dimensions - and tellingly they were usually supplied in sets of four. What a misfortune to damage all the wheels of your car at once! Although it reminds me of a client who found her Boxster (this was probably 20 years ago) completely devoid of wheels one morning ...

An interesting point in the reference is that it appears to try to establish a connection between the "complex product" (the car) and the replacement part by reference to the fact that the wheels are approved under UNECE Regulation No 124 for use on that particular model of car. I'm looking forward to seeing what the court makes of that. I'm also trying to find some more enticing prospects to look forward to.

Monkey selfie: Animal charity Peta challenges ruling - BBC News

BBC News reported a while ago that Peta, the animal rights charity, with which I usually have complete sympathy, is arguing in a court in California that copyright in the now-famous macaque self-portrait belongs to the photographer. It sounds as if there is some dispute about which monkey took the photo (by which I mean pressed the shutter release or whatever it's called on a digital camera, as I can't imagine that he or she had the faintest idea what the action would lead to), but that leaves the main point that the charity argues that "[n]othing in the Copyright Act limits its application to human authors…".

I claim no particular expertise in U.S. copyright law, and am prepared to accept that there is at least an arguable case to support that proposition. Whether that justifies Peta spending charitable funds on a lawsuit which most would consider frivolous is another matter. Ever since I read Peter Singer's "canonical" (nice word - thanks Wikipedia) book Animal Liberation (here on Amazon), one of the many ways in which I distracted myself from the grinding boredom of articles of clerkship (1978-1980), I have tried to be as conscious of speciesism as of racism and sexism. I haven't perfected it, but I hope I have got close.

I can't put my hands on my well-worn copy (the paperback version of the first (1975) edition, published 1977) just at the moment, but I don't think it contains anything about animals' copyright. [later: I have found it now, and there is no entry in the index for "copyright" or "intellectual property", or even just "property", which isn't conclusive but will do for now.] In UK copyright law, the author of a work (and therefore, usually, the first owner of copyright in it) is the person who creates it. A person is (this from the Oxford Companion to Law) typically defined as "a being, entity or unit which can bear legal rights and duties". The word "being" without the adjective "human" seems to leave open the possibility of animals being authors. However, legal personality, the article in the Companion goes on, has to be distinguished from legal status, citing as an example that we can say the legal status of an animal [a non-human animal, I would add, not for the avoidance of doubt but to highlight the ambiguity or inaccuracy of the original statement] is that of property and that of a human is a person.* Professor Singer might, I imagine, take issue with the narrow definition of "person", especially as the whole point of his thesis is, as I understood it, that we should regard animals as having rights (though not necessarily accompanying duties). However, that is clearly the way the law works and I don't see any way for Peta to put forward a case for an alternative interpretation in the English courts, even if the Charity Commission would let them.

Now that I have found my copy of the book again, I'll search it for any suggestion that animals' rights should extend to owning property, and in particular intellectual property. I'm fairly confident that, however proprietorial some animals might be, Professor Singer didn't advocate extending legal personality to them to that extent.

Not Lucy's book

*See further, R. Tur, 'The "Person" in Law', in A Peacocke and G Gillett (eds), Persons and Personality: A Contemporary Inquiry (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987), 121, and N Naffine, 'Who are Law's Persons? From Cheshire Cats to Responsible Subjects' (2003) 66/3 Modern Law Review 346. Professor Naffine is also the author of the article in the Oxford Companion to Law to which I referred and from which I repeat these two references.

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Visibly Faster Turnarounds By Indian Trademark Registry

This morning, when I opened my inbox, one email in particular surprised me. The email contained our first ever “e-certificate” for a trademark application filed just about one year ago! In the past, such prompt action by Indian IP Offices was almost unheard of. But clearly, the technology-enabled procedural changes introduced over the past year or so have begun to bear fruit.

The issues faced by the Registry in printing and dispatching hard copy (Registration Certificates) are quite well-known. On many occasions, the certificates did not reach the intended recipients. This not only caused delay and inconvenience to stakeholders but also imposed needless cost on the Registry as well as Applicants (who had to apply for a duplicate certificate).

About a month ago, the Indian Trademark office, via its notification dated 28^th July 2016, had notified the new system of sending only e-certificates (Registration), and doing away with the century old system of sending hard copies. This was made effective from 1^st August 2016 for all trademark applications:

• published in the Trade Marks Journal on or after November 23^rd, 2015;

• where no request for amendment filed on behalf of the applicant is pending disposal;

• where Trade Mark registry’s database contains the original application;

• where no compliance requirement is pending on part of the applicant; and

• which have not been specifically prohibited for registration by the order of any court, IPAB or any competent authority.

With the adoption of the new system it appears that the Registry is taking every possible step to eliminate the root cause for delay and thus expedite the registration process and deliver on the higher standards outlined in India’s new IP Policy.

Letters of Note: Mark Twain on copyright

Letters of Note - which is highly recommended reading at all times - has reproduced this letter by Mark Twain about US copyright law - more specifically about its failure to deal with cheap imports from Canada, and an early example I think of an international exhaustion rule. I think he should have been complaining about Canadian copyright law (which at the time was presumably Imperial copyright) - or perhaps about his own country's Declaration of Independence, or USexit as we might now call it. Which reminds me: one of the many, many disastrous effects of the UK leaving the EU (should it ever actually happen) will perhaps be the revival of the argument that exhaustion should happen globally - and without the constraints of EU law (and the more general constraint of the EU project) it will be harder to resist ... no doubt it would be hard to go the international exhaustion route if we remain in the single market, but that looks like an increasingly less likely outcome: if we want the single market we have to accept free movement, so the outcome is virtually identical to what we already have, and no doubt those who believe we are better off out of the EU will prefer to go for broke and cast the UK adrift in the stormy seas of global trade under the auspices of the WTO.

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Trade secrets directive becomes law (but will we have to implement it?)

The European Commission proposed a directive to harmonise protection of trade secrets throughout the European Union in 2014. The directive was unanimously adopted by the Council and three weeks later published in the Official Journal on 15 June 2016, and came into force on 5 July (Directive (EU) 2016/943 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 8 June 2016 on the protection of undisclosed know-how and business information (trade secrets) against their unlawful acquisition, use and disclosure.) Between publication and entry into force, of course, the UK's referendum on EU membership reduced the importance of the directive to this country.
Being a directive, the new law has to be implemented by the Member States. In the general confusion about how the UK will effect its exit, no one knows whether the directive will be implemented. Member States have two years in which to do is that, and two years is also the interval after giving notice under article 50 of the treaty when the UK will leave. However long passes before the UK gives notice, will determine how long the UK will be required to comply with the directive. That could be only a few months.
As with other areas of intellectual property law, however, it does seem quite likely that the UK will continue to ensure that its laws are aligned with those of the European Union. Depending on the future relationship with the EU, the UK might be obliged to comply with the directive anyway. In any event, it is hard to imagine that Parliament could possibly find time to replace more than a tiny part of our EU-derived law. The trade secrets directive is likely to remain important. However, the detailed shape of the Directive is likely to emerge only once the Court of Justice is seised of some cases in which it can give its interpretation of the law – and its rulings will cease, at some point, to apply to the UK.
Article 2 defines a trade secret as information that

• Is secret in the sense that it is not generally known among or readily accessible to persons within the circles that normally deal with this kind of information;
  
• Has commercial value because it is secret; and
  
• Has been subject to reasonable steps under the circumstances, by the person lawfully in control of the information, to keep it secret.
  

While the first and third of these requirements are at least similar to English law, the requirement for commercial value narrows the scope of the definition – which is hardly surprising, as the Directive is seeking to define a narrower class of information than the broad class of confidential information which our law protects.
The acquisition of a trade secret is unlawful when it is carried out by unauthorised access to materials, or any other conduct which is considered contrary to “honest commercial practices”. Where the trade secret is acquired from a third party and the person who acquired it knew or should have known that the third party was acting unlawfully, that acquisition will also be considered unlawful. Using or disclosing a trade secret will be considered unlawful when it is in breach of a confidentiality agreement or some other duty not to disclose the trade secret or to limit its use.
Remedies are dealt with in Article 11. They include the usual remedies in intellectual property cases – damages, interim and final injunctions, destruction of unlawful goods. There are no criminal offences, but Member States remain free to introduce their own.
The Directive has been criticised as “a threat to public interest and democracy” because of the perceived threat it poses to whistle-blowers and the press. The Panama Papers scandal in 2016 highlighted these concerns. The Directive does provide some protection for whistle-blowers and the press, so the question is whether the exceptions are sufficient. They are set out in Article 5 and cover disclosure of a trade secret for:

• exercising the right to freedom of expression and information as set out in the [European] Charter [for Fundamental rights], including the respect for freedom and pluralism of the media;
  
• revealing misconduct, wrongdoing or illegal activity, provided that the respondent acted for the purpose of protecting the general public interest.
  

Recital 20 says that “the measures, procedures and remedies provided for in this Directive should not restrict whistle-blowing activity. Therefore, the protection of trade secrets should not extend to cases in which disclosure of a trade secret serves the public interest insofar as directly relevant misconduct, wrongdoing or illegal activity is revealed.” Nevertheless, critics argue that the burden for showing that disclosure is in the public interest will fall on the whistle-blower or journalist, and there have been calls for a further directive to give more extensive protection to them.
English law on breach of confidence, non-statutory as it is, gives narrower exceptions to protect whistle-blowers and the like. The changes demanded by the Directive would not be great, but some extension of the public interest rule (covering, remember, only trade secrets) might well be needed.

Lending of electronic books is comparable to the lending of traditional books

Lending a digital book to a reader must be the equivalent of lending a physical copy: it hardly seems to need thinking about, does it? But in the copyright world things are often not as simple or logical as they first appear. When an e-book is lent to a reader, is that the restricted act of lending (or perhaps rental, if money changes hands) or is it making available to the public? And should it fall within public lending rights schemes, which it would if it were regarded as lending? Which act it is, determines whether authors are remunerated for the activity. In the UK it has been treated as "making available", and therefore outside the scope of public lending right, a matter of concern to my trade union the Society of Authors - but perhaps not for much longer.

In Case C-174/15, Vereniging Openbare Bibliotheken v Stichting Leenrecht, Advocate-General Szpunar has indicated that the activity should be treated as a form of lending. Provided it is on the "one copy, one user" basis (the library lends the e-book to one person, and can't lend it to another until it has been "returned") this is economically no different from lending a hard-copy book. The Advocate-General considered that the fact that the 2006 rental and lending directive was silent on the matter of e-books indicated no more than that the technology was in its infancy - a bit of a feeble excuse, because although the Kindle was launched in November 2007, less than a year after the Directive was passed, Sony had produced the Librie in 2004 and the Reader in 2006. More to the point, perhaps, e-books have been around since at least 1971 when Michael S Hart set up the very wonderful Project Gutenberg, so why didn't the directive take into account what was already pretty old technology?

Whatever the answer to that, the Advocate-General thinks that the directive should be read so as to cover e-books. This is exactly the sort of judicial activism that gives the Court of Justice a bad name - not reason to vote Out tomorrow, but certainly (for me) a reason to be with Jeremy Corbyn - about 70 per cent "remain". If the EU produced half-decent legislation to start with, I might be up to 75 or 80 per cent.

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Garage's use of carmaker's trade mark

It's rather hard to see why a case in which an unauthorised repairer, sued by the manufacturer for trade mark infringement, would even justify the expense of going to court. Nevertheless in Bayerische Motoren Werke AG v Technosport London Ltd and Anor [2016] EWHC 797 (IPEC) (13 April 2016) that is exactly what happened, and the defendant won on one count of trade mark infringement. But it lost on another two, and on passing off, so had a bad day overall.

BMW alleged infringements of their BMW trade mark, the roundel device and the "M" device which denotes certain high-performance models in their range. Perhaps I should write "extra-high performance".

The first two are Community or now EU trade marks, and the third an International designating the EU, so the legislation which was engaged in the case was Council Regulation (EC) No. 207/2009. In each case the claimant invoked art.9(1)(a) (double identity) and (b) (likelihood of confusion) and in the case of the "M" device art.9(1)(c) (unfair advantage) as well, and all three infringements had associated passing off claims. That seems pretty comprehensive.
 The uses of the trade marks were all the things that one expects of an unauthorised repairer. There was the use of the description "BMW Specialist" on the fascia on the garage premises, which it was accepted was not liable to affect any of the functions of the trade mark (Case C-63/97, Deenik): it was an accurate message about the services offered by the defendant, and was not even pleaded. The roundel also appeared on the fascia, which was another matter: and it was on a van, business cards and a banner inside the premises. The "M" logo appeared on the website.

The novel allegations of infringement concerned the fact that Mr Agyeton, the proprietor of the defendant, wore a shirt with the initials "BMW" on it and he or the defendant operated a Twitter account with the handle @TechnosportBMW. That claim did not succeed, but the others did. The fact that the roundel featured on the packaging of parts which were supplied (through the authorised dealer network) to the defendant, as the law requires them to be, made the claim a little more complicated. In addition, promotional items bearing the roundel were provided to dealers as part of the manufacturer's efforts to encourage the sale of genuine parts, and would be passed on to non-authorised dealers, who would pass them on to customers, which further complicated the matter. In the end, however, the judge was satisfied that the average consumer would not understand the roundel on the packaging to indicate that the garage was an authorised repairer. But where the roundel was displayed on or in the premises, the average consumer would assume that this indicated a connection between the garage and BMW, or (if that was not the case) at least it would cause consumers to wonder about the connection.

The use of the roundel also amounted to taking unfair advantage of the reputation of the trade mark (art.9(1)(c)), although that won't have added anything to the remedies (and, being an IPEC case, the amount of damages available was limited anyway).

The use of the "M" device would also have those effects, so that too amounted to an infringement. But the use of the BMW signs conveyed no suggestion that the defendant was an authorised repairer, partly because the evidence provided didn't get BMW far enough, so this line of attack is hardly foreclosed by this judgment.  There is an interesting argument that, because BMW dealers commonly include "BMW" in their business names, the addition of the defendant's name could actually made it seem more like a representation that there was a connection: the judge thought that too subtle for the average consumer, but it should definitely not be discounted in future. A manufacturer might well find a way to make that approach work in their favour.

Where, you might wonder, do the art.12 defences feature in this case? The answer is that the defendant accepted that art.12 added nothing to the defence to the infringement claim, namely that "the defendant's use of the signs was not liable to affect the functions of the Trade Marks.  This was because the signs as used by TLL would in each case have conveyed to the average consumer that TLL was a specialist in the repair and maintenance of BMW vehicles, using genuine BMW spare parts." I expected to see detailed consideration of the "honest practices in industrial and commercial matters" proviso, as in Volvo v Heritage, but the judge wasn't asked to get into that.

Regarding the passing-off claims, these stood or fell with the trade mark claims, and the judge explained the connection between the two which strikes me as an interesting point:

 Had I found that the message conveyed by TLL’s use of its roundel and the M logo signs in each case did no more than render the average consumer unable to determine whether there was an economic link between TLL and BMW, as opposed to causing the average consumer to take the view that there was such a link, on that evidence I would have concluded that there had been no passing off by TLL, see Reed Executive plc v Reed Business Information Ltd [2004] RPC 40, at [111] and Phones 4U Ltd v Phone4U.co.uk.Internet Ltd [2007] RPC 5, at [16].

"Unable to determine" and "caused to wonder" amount to the same thing (so it appears from this judgment), so the test for passing off is somewhat stricter than that for trade mark infringement.

Copyright in digitally remastered recordings

I read recently (here in Billboard and Music Law Updates) about a case in the USA in which it was argued that when a digitally-remastered recording was broadcast, it was not a broadcast of a much older recording (originally in analogue form) and therefore escaped the need to pay. It turns on a point of US law, at the intersection of State and Federal law, which makes the status of pre-1972 recordings debatable. That goes beyond the scope of this blog - but it led me to some thoughts about how copyright works when sound recordings are remastered.

I don't like the basis on which that court in California decided its case: which is not to say that I think the judge was wrong, because it's their law and it's not for me to say what is and isn't the legal position. But I do think that, if the principle is that a remastered recording of an earlier recording is a new copyright work, that's not right.

I've thought this instinctively for some time. Now I think I know why I feel that way. The way I see it, a recording is what is made of a performance of some sort. I know that the law doesn't define a sound recording in that way but perhaps it should - perhaps it's the definition of a sound recording that's wrong. Take, for example (because I happen to be listening to it), Kind of Blue. Some might say not the best example because the 1992 digital remastering changed the key of the music - but I don't think it makes any difference. Miles Davis and the other members of the sextet played the music in 1959 and a recording was made. No new recording was made in 1986, 1992, 1997 or 2005. To my way of thinking, there is only one recording, one copyright work: subsequent productions are just that, new productions of the same recording. No separate copyright should subsist in the remastered version. That isn't, apparently, the state of US copyright law, and it probably isn't the state of UK copyright law - but I think it should be.

China: JLR sue Landwind over Evoque look-alike

According to Reuters, Jaguar Land Rover has become the first western car maker to sue a Chinese rival, Jiangling Motor, in China for copying its design. Although copying is rife, the difficulty of enforcing intellectual property rights in China has usually deterred manufacturers from taking such a step - Honda took action to protect the CR-V design from copying by a little-known Chinese company, and were in court for 12 years before winning far smaller damages than they had sought.

The JLR suit is based (it seems) on copyright and unfair competition law. Jianling's Landwind X7 - the latest version of which was announced last November - bears a striking resemblance to the Evoque. It has softer, more rounded angles on the front, but cheap kits enable the owner to modify the look to make it more like an Evoque, which costs three times as much.

In the UK, JLR have applied to register the appearance of the Evoque as a trade mark. The application is still under examination, but there are many precedents for vehicle shapes being registered as trade marks - though how effective they are has not yet been shown in litigation.

Who owns a Banksy mural?

The late Sir Hugh Laddie famously became a bit fed up with having to deal with general Chancery Division business, like landlord and tenant matters, when he was the Patents Court judge. But he'd probably have been perfectly happy with a dispute over the ownership of a wall, as in The Creative Foundation v Dreamland Leisure Ltd & Ors [2015] EWHC 2556 (Ch) (11 September 2015).

Separating intellectual property from the concrete items in or on which it is carried or displayed is a big conceptual problem for anyone coming fresh to the topic. A literary work is an abstract matter, separate from but related to the book in which it is printed. A painting likewise: ownership of the canvas does not confer ownership of the copyright, though provided the legal formalities are observed the two can certainly stay in the same ownership. However, this analysis rather assumes that the artist owned the canvas at the time - or at least had the right to apply paint to it. What if she didn't? And what (if it makes any difference) if it wasn't canvas, but a wall?

The growth of street art, and the growth of the respectability of street art too, has resulted in new challenges to the law. The intersection of intellectual property and landlord and tenant law would surely have appealed to Mr Justice Laddie, as it seems to have done to Mr Justice Arnold. The topic is discussed in greater detail in this article on the City University blog, by Enrico Bonadio.

Banksy (because of course it was he) created the mural in suit in Folkestone during the town's triennial arts festival in 2014. The organiser of the festival, The Creative Foundation, acquired the rights to the painting from the landlord, but the tenant removed it, arguing that this was an incident of its obligations to maintain the premises. It further argued that it had become the owner of the painting, but instead of disposing of  it at the local tip as one might expect the repairer of a defaced wall to do, they shipped it to the United States where it was to be auctioned.

Mr Justice Arnold had no difficulty in deciding that the painting had become part of the fabric of the building and therefore was the property of the landlord (who had transferred ownership to the Foundation). On being removed from the building, the claimant argued, the bricks and mortar (and paint) became once again the chattels which they had been before they were made into a wall and incorporated into a piece of real property, and section 2 of the Torts (Interference with Goods) Act 1977 came into play, allowing the court to order delivery up. Without referring expressly to the 1977 Act, the judge did just that.

The judgment should make it more difficult for people to remove murals from property they do not own - although in practical terms it is surely significant that Banksies, one removed from their original sites, seem to cross the Atlantic pretty quickly to be sold by auction beyond the effective reach of the English courts.

As for copyright, Mr Justice Arnold also had no difficulty in recognising that Banksy owned it in the work in question. Given that he is in the habit of painting on other people's canvasses, an activity which in the law's humourless way could be counted as criminal damage (though I doubt it would ever give rise to a complaint), that is a relevant point. Glyn v Weston tells us that copyright will be withheld on public policy grounds from immoral works, and works the creation of which involves the commission of an offence might well be treated the same way - although the new owner of the painting (the owner of the newly-painted wall) will usually give retrospective permission for it. In the US, as Dr Bonadio (who incidentally calls Arnold J "Justice Arnold", thus promoting him to the Supreme Court) notes, graffiti artists would probably be denied copyright protection under the "clean hands" doctrine.

A graffiti-sprayer with dirty hands - there's an interesting idea ...

Glee for the lawyers?

I hesitate to use the word "bullying" in the context of trade mark litigation of doubtful merit, because bullying is not something about which to speak or write lightly. But the expression "trade mark bullying" has entered common parlance, at least among trade mark practitioners, and I suppose that as a lexicographer - a label which I can't really fail to acknowledge - I am committed to accepting the way language is used, although under no obligation not to be critical about it.

Comic Enterprises Ltd v Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation [2016] EWCA Civ 455 (25 May 2016) is as unedifying a case of a big trade mark owner trying to overcome a small one irrespective of the strengths of their case as one could hope not to see. Reading this morning that the unsuccessful claimants (and unsuccessful respondents) are seeking to take the case to the Supreme Court, which one might imagine would be making lawyers rub their hands with glee, actually adds to the unedifyingness of the whole thing and makes it look more like bullying.

On 16 February the Court of Appeal dismissed Fox's appeal against a decision of Roger Wyand QC (sitting as a deputy judge) that they had infringed the claimant's earlier trade mark, leaving an appeal against the deputy judge's refusal to revoke the claimant's trade mark to be resolved. The Court of Appeal has now dismissed that appeal too. (A passing-off claim was unsuccessful at first instance, and the claimant's cross-appeal on that claim was dismissed.)

Essentially, the claim is about reverse confusion. The claimant opened the first of its (primarily) stand-up comedy clubs in 1994, and filed a trade mark application in 1999. The application was for registration of a series of two device marks, in which the word "Glee" was prominent and the difference lay in the colours. This proved to be the claimant's Achilles heel, leading to the claim that the registration was invalid.

The defendant produced a television show entitled "glee" [sic], perhaps hoping that if they didn't give the title a capital initial they might be able to argue that it wasn't trade mark use. Fat chance of that. It was first broadcast in the UK in December 2009, so the claimant's registration gave them a head start of over a decade. The claimant's registration was wide enough to cover the defendant's activities, or many of them - including merchandising and concerts. It looks like an open-and-shut case, and as far as infringement goes it is hard to see why on earth it should even have got to court let alone the Court of Appeal.

The answer lies in the fact that the likelihood of confusion - necessary, because the trade mark and the defendant's sign are merely similar,  not identical - provided an opportunity to mount a defence. Not a strong one, perhaps, but at least there was a possibility. The odd thing here is that the confusion goes in the opposite direction to what is normal. The senior mark was being confused with the (better-known) junior one. But that didn't matter: there was a likelihood of confusion, there were witnesses to attest to the fact that they had thought the club and the television programme were connected, or came from the same source, and that was all that was needed. Reverse confusion, like reverse passing off (as in Bristol Conservatories)?

Better, though, was the argument that the trade mark was invalid, that it didn't qualify as a series or even that such a series trade mark could not be registered under the terms of the directive. But that's another story which I don't have time to write at the moment. I was pleased to note from the first instance judgment that the extract from the Registry's manual shows as an example a trade mark for which I filed the original application - though it wasn't, and apparently still isn't, a series (the Registry might have adapted it to illustrate the point they wanted to make).

Steal This Riff: How To Fix Copyright Law And Set Musicians Free - MTV

I'm always rather unconvinced by "how to fix copyright" articles, but here is an interesting contribution to the debate about sampling, proposing a compulsory licensing solution. Paradoxically (I think) the new technologies that make this a problem also hold the key to collecting micro-payments in return for use of a copyright work, so rendering collective licensing potentially redundant. And why should any licensing scheme be compulsory? That might have been the best way to strike a balance between owners and users a few years ago, but the technology now puts rights owners in charge of the use of the own rights, and if they don't want to grant licences they shouldn't have to, provided of course that they don't simply discriminate on bad grounds. Usually, I imagine, they would be happy to have the money: that after all is what motivates most people to create copyright works.

Coincidentally, this appeared in my feed reader the same day that the BBC reported (here) that a copyright infringement suit brought in Germany by [a member of] Kraftwerk, over a two-second sample of the drum part of the band's 1977 song Metall auf Metall. I never got Kraftwerk, as it happens, or any other Kraut-rock bands from that era (though I think I might find Tangerine Dream interesting if I had the time to try). But I digress. The German courts have been on Kraftwerk's side, up to and including the Bundesgerichtshof, but now apparently the Federal Constitutional Court - Bundesverfassungsgericht - has come to the conclusion that the decision could affect the defendant's (Moses Pelham's) constitutional rights, making it impossible to create music in a particular style (since when was that a constitutional right?) and has sent to case back to the BGH to reconsider.



If this is what they are complaining about, I can't identify the offending drum track: nothing original to my ears. Sounds quite pleasant - but that isn't always a good thing to say about music.



The drums sound quite original here, and nothing like on Nur Mir. I think it might become a little boring before it finishes, though. Much more interesting to listen to Steve Reich if you want Drumming.




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Council adopts trade secrets directive

The EU Council has adopted the trade secrets directive. The Council's press release is here. The Directive comes into force 20 days after publication in the Official Journal and Member States have two years in which to implement it.

It follows hot on the heels of similar legislation in the US, prompting me to think about a short comparative study of the two - but not today.