IP Menu News - The Latest Intellectual Property Resource News
09 December 2008
“Up to one million” pirated DVDs seized in Sydney
As reported by the Sydney Morning Herald, NSW police recently raided a number of premises in order to disrupt a pirating ring producing counterfeit DVDs and CDs.
The five raids followed months of investigations by the police and entertainment industry organizations.
See also the account in the Australian.
New Australian Head of WIPO pledges to make changes
Dr Francis Gurry yesterday delivered a speech to the WIPO General Assembly accepting his nomination as Director-General. Dr Gurry’s appointment comes amidst a turbulent period for WIPO. A division had arisen between the developed and developing world over the controversial outgoing Director-General Dr Kamal Indris and additionally, The Australian cites a PriceWaterhouseCoopers audit of WIPO found organisational inefficiencies and staffing-related problems.
In his speech Dr Gurry acknowledged:
‘Patent Offices are choking on demand ... There are an estimated 3.5 million
unexamined patent applications in the world today. The quality of the output of
Patent Offices, pushed to cope with such strong demand, is also under critical
scrutiny.’
‘The Patent Cooperation Treaty…is not providing a
sufficiently adequate solution to the crisis in demand management’
Dr Gurry outlined a number of changes to be made to address the grievances leveled at WIPO; namely improving efficiency and improving communication between WIPO, member states, and other UN bodies.
View his acceptance speechForbes article on Dr Gurry
The Innovation Review Panel yesterday released the Review of Australia’s National Innovation System.
A number of recommendations are made such as supporting enterprise in business and tax incentives for research and development.
The report made several recommendations with respect to intellectual property. These included that intellectual property should be managed as a facet of economic policy; and also that the threshold of inventiveness required for the filing of new patents be raised, contending that a low threshold of inventiveness actually impedes innovation (at 84).
Senator Kim Carr, Minister of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research said that the government will release a response by the end of the year.
View the Review and Senator Carr’s press release.
The new version of ATMOSS has the following additions:
"Allow search by ‘notification date’ as shown below (this can be found under the Advanced Search Option):
TM number ‘from’ Range now functions correctly.
If a TM record is a Certification mark, there will be a hyperlink to the “Certification Mark Rules” on the Trade Mark Details page."
The changes to the E-Form TM application system include:
"For TM Headstart Applications, Email address is now mandatory for both the address for correspondence and applicant details screen
The system has been updated so that there is a limit of how many categories you can select using the picklist. The maximum number of categories you can select is 2,000 per application.
Customers now have the option of emailing themselves an official receipt for TM Applications, TM Headstart Requests and TM Headstart payments.
Customers can now enter up to 200 characters for an organisation name. If organisation is also the Address for Correspondence then they will be asked to provide an abbreviated name with a limit of 35 characters."
Australia - INTA to present education conference in Australia
The International Trademark Association (INTA) and IP Australia will present a two day conference on March 11-12 2008. This will be the first time INTA's educational conference for industry will be held in Australia.
The conference, entitled, 'Trademark Regatta - Asia-Pacific', "will focus on issues facing trademarks throughout the region, including:
Issues impacting the future direction of trademarks
Indigenous peoples and trademarks
Nontraditional trademarks – A review of Trade Mark Office and Court decisions, and the attitude toward survey evidence
Protection of famous trademarks and related dilution issues
Madrid Protocol – Has it been good for business?
A roundup of Internet issues
Case studies and successful branding strategies" (INTA website)
"Speakers from around the globe are scheduled to appear as part of the program including Paul Twomey, Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, Owen J. Malone, Foster's Group Limited, Ernesto Rubio, World Intellectual Property Organization, Lynne G. Beresford, U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, Wubbo de Boer, Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market and Woon Yin Liew, Intellectual Property Office of Singapore." (IP Australia News)
The full program and online registration is available from the INTA Regatta website.
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