Golf madness strikes Newport

The soi disant Intellectual Property Office has gone a bit golf mad.  In a new page on their website, they report that Newport is the home of both intellectual property (really?) and the 2010 Ryder Cup, which is due to tee off on October 1st.  They also use the opportunity to provide some tasty facts and stories about IP and golf, the most unusual of which (to this Kat's eyes at least) is that there is a weblog that exists purely for the purposes of looking at IP aspects of golf (The IP Golf Guy), which is worth a look if only to see how much there is to say on the subject (quite a lot, apparently).

Right: The IPKat and friends try their paws at golf.

In relation to golf and IP, the IPO mention the surprising story of the Titleist Pro V1, also known as the "billion dollar golf ball" (and available from all good John Lewis stores), which has been the subject of a rather large patent dispute in the US.  They also point out the dispute about whether Newport rap superstars Goldie Lookin Chain were infringing copyright in an Alicia Keys song.  What this has to do with golf is quite beyond the IPKat but, for some Friday fun, the video below is well worth a look, provided it hasn't been taken down by YouTube.

If all that isn't enough golf- and Newport-related trivia for you, the IPKat has noticed that there have also been a surprising number of golf-related patent decisions coming out of the IPO in recent times, some of which this Kat has had the pleasure to summarise in his regular CIPA journal columns.  These include decisions relating to patentability of a golf putter (Hideaki Koiwai, BL O/373/07), a wrist-mounted golf swing analyser (Suunto Oy, BL O/089/10), a method of determining the length of a golf club (Darran Bird, BL O/188/10), a method of mapping a golf course (Sports Analysis Limited, BL O/076/09), and a golf driving range complex (David Evans, BL O/175/10).  Clearly the IPO is on to something about golf and IP being an interesting mix.

UK-IPO to outsource to India

UPDATE, 1 April 4pm: If you have been directed here expecting to see an item about the UK-IPO outsourcing work to India, please note the date and the comments below.  

The UK-IPO: trendy but pointless?

The IPKat has just noticed an amusing quote in a recent case that may have passed many of his readers by. In EI Du Pont Nemours & Co v United Kingdom Intellectual Property Office [2009] EWCA Civ 966, dated 17 September 2009 but only recently made publicly available (see the SPC blog for more), the Honourable Lord Justice Jacob writes:

"Under the SPC scheme an SPC has to be applied for in each Member State where it is wanted – there is no central scheme. Quite why, I do not know. In this country the application is made to the Patent Office (which now goes by the trendy but pointless "operating name" of "UK Intellectual Property Office")" (paragraph 3).

As should be clear to anyone who tends to read the small print first, the UK-IPO is only an outward facade for what is officially still known as the Patent Office. If we are going to be proper about it, the Office should still be identified by the 'old' name, as that is what the law says it is called. Does the new name, which has now been firmly established in the minds of most people, really make any difference or is it a bit pointless? Does anybody at all think that the name is even trendy?

Tweaks to the UK patent system

As from next month (4th October, to be precise), the UK-IPO will be implementing two fairly minor tweaks to the UK patent system, one of which is designed to make the work of patent examiners easier, while the other may result in slightly less pain for applicants and their attorneys too. The detail of these changes are available, but well hidden, on the UK-IPO's website here and here.

(right: no, not that sort of Tweak)

The first involves changes to patent forms 9A and 10, relating to requests for search and examination respectively. A new option will be available to allow applicants to permit the UK-IPO to share search and examination reports with other patent offices. While these would be available anyway after publication, they will become available on a confidential basis beforehand, if permitted by the applicant on filing. The IPKat thinks that this will probably be of no use to most applicants, but could be useful when speedy processing is required in more than one country, and is really of most use to patent examiners to avoid duplication of work.

The second tweak relates to a new, and technically quite complicated, arrangement under the Priority Document Access Service (PDAS), a facility available via WIPO for electronically accessing copies of priority documents. At the moment, physical certified copies are normally required when filing foreign applications, so that the foreign office can be sure of a priority claim. With PDAS, if the priority application was filed at the UK-IPO electronically and the applicant chooses to allow the application to become available through the service, further applications at other offices (but currently only these ones) can be filed indicating that a copy of the earlier application is available online. The IPKat thinks that this is a sensible fix for a common problem, particularly when dealing with offices that tend to be a bit slow in providing certified copies.

UPDATE, 23 September 2009: More information on new Forms 9A and 10 is available from the UK-IPO here.

Reinstatement of UK patent applications

The UK-IPO has this week issued a practice notice relating to reinstatement of patent applications, following Mr Justice Pumfrey's judgment in Anning's application [2007] EWHC 2770 (Pat). This attempts to clarify what happens if there has been a failure to meet a time limit, for example as given in an examination report. The substance of the notice goes as follows:

Where an application has been treated as refused at the end of the compliance period due to failure to respond to a substantive examination report, the application may be reinstated provided that the requirements of section 20A and rule 32 are met. Where reinstatement is allowed, the applicant shall be allowed a period of not less than two months to respond to the substantive examination report, since it is the failure to respond to the examination report which led to the application being treated as refused. However, this will not have the effect of extending the compliance period. Therefore, where an application is reinstated after the compliance period has ended, and the opportunity under rule 108 for extending that period has expired, amendment of the reinstated application will not be possible. The applicant will instead have the opportunity of providing arguments, within the two month period, to show that the application was in order at the end of the compliance period.

It follows that in any circumstances where an application is refused, or treated as having been refused or withdrawn, due to failure by the applicant to comply with a requirement of the Act or rules, reinstatement of the application will not have the effect of extending the compliance period.

This notice highlights the importance of putting the application in order before the end of the compliance period. The compliance period may be extended in two-month tranches under rule 108(2) or 108(3), by filing Form 52, the appropriate fee and evidence supporting the request for an extension, if rule 108(3) applies. Any request for such an extension must be filed within two months of expiry of the period.

The IPKat is unsure why it has taken the UK-IPO nearly two years to getting round to doing this. Does it tell us anything we didn't already know?

Save £10 on your patenting costs

The IPKat has had his attention brought to the (rather tautologically-sounding) Trade Marks and Trade Marks and Patents (Fees) (Amendment) Rules 2009, SI 2009, No. 2089, which is going to be making a few changes to the Trade Marks Rules 2008, the Trade Marks (Fees) Rules 2008 and the Patents (Fees) Rules 2007 as from October 2009.

As far as the IPKat can gather, the changes are mainly to do with tinkering around the edges of the current set-up. Among other minor things, some new allowances will be made for electronic filing of applications. One change in particular is that a whopping £10 saving will in future be possible when paying application or search fees on a patent application, if filing electronically. Any savings may, however, be short-lived if other proposed changes (as reported by the IPKat here) go ahead as planned.

Is it safe?

As all UK patent attorneys will know, getting an order under section 22 is a complete pain. Not quite as bad as dentistry without anaesthetics, but not far off and, for the applicant, somewhat more expensive. Unfortunately it is not always easy to know what qualifies as "being information the publication of which might be prejudicial to national security" (according to s22(1)), so the general rule is either to wait six weeks after filing a UK patent application to find out if a order has been made or, if a first filing outside the UK is required and there is no time to do anything else, to send a copy of your application to the mysterious Room GR70 and ask if it is safe to file it abroad without risking being put in prison for up to two years (s22(9)).

The UK-IPO have now issued some guidance on what might constitute information that could risk a section 22 order being made. Along with the obvious ones like nuclear bombs and chemical weapons, however, there are quite a few categories in which apparently innocuous technology could conceivably fall foul of a secrecy order. The IPKat wonders whether an application directed to encryption, electronics or aerials (to take just a few examples from the list, all of which this Kat has drafted applications to without any thought to a secrecy order being relevant) would fall foul if no mention were to be made of a military application. If encryption is useful, it it not also useful militarily? As a result, in the IPKat's view, this list does not really provide any help at all, and seems likely to result in more confusion for patent attorneys and more work for those in Room GR70. If anyone has any properly useful guidance about what to look out for, could they please let the IPKat and his readers know?

UK-IPO: more money please

The UK-IPO have just announced a consultation on proposals for introducing changes to the fees charged for getting and keeping UK patents. The proposed changes are many and various, and can be digested in detail by reading the consultation document itself. These include:

• substantial (roughly doubling) increases to search and examination fees;
• the introduction of excess claims fees (although not quite at the level of the EPO);
• increased renewal fees;
• a new fee for contested proceedings; and
• a new fee for recording registrable transactions under section 32.

The IPO's reasoning for many of the increases includes the fact that (amazingly) no substantial increases have been implemented since the early 1990s, and there apparently should be some 're-balancing' of the way the IPO's work is funded, since the cost of search and examination is at the moment mostly paid for by renewal fees.

The IPO want to know what you think about it, and will be welcoming answers to their 11 questions in the consultation until 12 October 2009.

OHIM-IPO class heading conflict case

The IPKat reports on Daimler v Sany [2009] EWHC 1003 (Ch), a request for summary judgment, which was refused on 14 May by Mr Geoffrey Hobbs QC, sitting as a Deputy High Court judge.

Daimler sued Sany for trade mark infringement, claiming that Sany's device mark caused confusion with and took unfair advantage of, or caused detriment to the well-known Mercedes Benz figurative mark. The Mercedes mark was registered in Classes 7 and 12 and Sany had applied to register its mark in Classes 7 and 12, together with a statement supporting the application saying that Sany had been using the mark, or had an intention that it would be so used.

Sany counter-claimed for part-cancellation of Daimler's mark. Daimler had specified the goods for which the mark was registered by giving the class headings for Classes 7 and 12 in the Nice Classification.

Mr Hobbs QC noted that there was an inconsistency in approach between OHIM and the IPO - the former allowing class headings as clams to all goods and services within a particular class, the latter objecting to wide and vague specifications, and also taking a literal approach to what is covered by class headings (e.g. Class 15 is entitled musical instruments, so specification adopting the class heading would only cover instruments and not, for example, music stands, which are included in the class). The Deputy Judge noted that he did not think that there was room for such a divergence to co-exist in the European trade mark system, and for these purposes led to a real issue that could not be decided via a summary judgment.

Daimler couldn't sidestep the issue by seeking to rely on those goods for which it had clearly used the mark, and which were clearly included in Sany's specification. There were issues concerning the goods for which Daimler's mark should remain registered and these would impact on the question of similarity of goods, which would impact on the question of confusion. It was also an open question whether the marks were similar enough to cause confusion.

The IPKat isn't too sure what could be done at trial that would resolve the conflict between OHIM and the IPO. Is a reference to the ECJ in the offing, he wonders...?

Mercedes the Cat here

New Oxford IP Professor; IPO fees reduction on the cards?

New Oxford IP professor

Oxford University has officially announced the appointment of Graeme Dinwoodie as Professor of Intellectual Property and Information Technology Law at Oxford University. He will take up his appointment in June.

The IPKat wishes Graeme the best of luck in his new position.

Full press release here.


Fees consultation

The Intellectual Property Office (which the IPKat wouldn't dare call the Patent Office, or even the UK-IPO) has launched a consultation on fees and services.

The aims are to ensure that the registration of national trade marks is a viable option, to ensure that businesses continue to protect their IP during the economic downturn and to encourage e-business.

Amongst the proposals are an early assistance scheme for trade mark applications, a 50% fee reduction for e- filing of trade marks and a lesser reduction for patents, the abolition of series registrations for trade marks, the scrapping of the fast track trade mark registration procedure (because the normal procedure is just as fast) and the reduction of trade mark tribunal fees.

Responses are due by 1 June.

The IPKat notes that most of the proposals are aimed at trade marks. This could be because of the need to compete with OHIM, but perhaps businesses are more willing to put less money into protecting their trade marks than their patents when the going gets tough.

Darkness visible at the IPO

The IPKat dabbled with the occult by reading the decision of Mr Hobbs QC, sitting as Appointed Person in the opposition concerning DARKNESS VISIBLE.

One Mr Ross Heaven applied to register DARKNESS VISIBLE for ‘Arranging and conducting workshops’ and ‘Spiritual and lifestyle counselling’ in January 2006. This was opposed by a Simon Buxton, who argued that he had an earlier right protected by passing off dating back to January 2003.

Heaven and Buxton had collaborated, providing workshops and writing a book entitled Darkness Visible, but this collaboration had come to an end by the end of 2005. The key theme was the spiritual effects of living in total darkness for a period of time. However, both claimed that they had come up with the concept first and had invited the other to join him.

Mr Buxton explained that he had been introduced to the use of darkness during his induction into a ‘small, private shamanic group of bee-keepers known as The Path of Pollen’ by a process introduced to his as ‘darkness visible’. He described that

‘I was myself Apis Mellifera, a male drone, surrounded by forty thousand female workers and, somewhere, our queen, our regent. …I was no longer human, but a member of a completely different genus’ and ‘The Bee Master eventually placed me in what appeared to be an oversized, six-sided dog basket…’

Buxton published his experiences in a book which featured an effusive introduction by Heaven, but by the time of the hearing he claimed that he had ghost-written the book and that ‘it was conceived and written as a work of fiction and that the ‘path of pollen’ does not exist’..

Heaven also provided witness statements from those who had been on his 2001/2 workshops, stating that the techniques described in Buxton’s book had been used by Heaven in those pre-2003 workshops. Buxton produced his own witnesses, and there both sides tried to discredit each other’s witnesses (including, it seems, with the use of black magic altars).

One of the witnesses claimed that her original statement had been forged, and was produced to support Heaven without her knowledge. Another witness refuted this claimined that the two statements had been signed together in a pub in Arundel, and that she had lent the other witness her pen. Mr Hobbs QC noted that the two statements were signed in different coloured inks.

The Hearing Officer found that this was a case of shared goodwill, and that the oppositon would have to be rejected because both Heaven and Buxton were just as entitled as each other to register the mark.

Mr Hobbs QC found that the Hearing Officer had erred as he had adopted a ‘selelctive approach’ to the evidence that did not have the breadth and depth required for the case. A structured approach to assessment was necessary, and this revealed that Mr Buxton’s organisation was entitled to claim the mark because of the use of it made in commerce since January 2003. Heaven’s claim to proprietorship was open to doubt, particularly in the light of his claim that he had been part of an elaborate hoax regarding The Path of Pollen. Also, in oral submissions he had made it clear that he had no documentary evidence of his earlier use of the term.

Mr Hobbs QC criticised Heaven for burdening the proceedings with unnecessary evidence and Buxton for ‘using the proceedings as a vehicle for unimpressive evidence about his self-proclaimed initiation into the so-called Path of Pollen’.

As for the supposedly false witness statement, the Appointed Person noted that he could made a reference to the Director of Public Prosecutions but didn’t becaused he did not think ‘the public interest requires more public resources to be devoted to the further unmasking of bad behaviour in the context of what has plainly been an over-emotional dispute that ran out of control.’

The IPKat can’t help but think that the whole thing was rather a waste of time. The amount of time and effort in assembling the evidence must have far outweighed the value of the mark. As for using the proceedings as a vehicle to publicise the Path of Pollen, the IPKat can think of few less receptive audiences that a roomful of IP lawyers.

Trade mark registrations for shopping centres

The UK IPO has issued a new Practice Notice (PAN 01/09) concerning acceptable trade mark specifications for the provision of shopping centre services.

Key points:

• registration can be obtained for both real and ‘viritual’ (i.e. online) shopping centre services
• the services which are brought together by the centre operated must be clearly defined and related to the primary activity of providing retail outlets, so terms like ‘and other services’ won’t do. However, the Registry is taking a wideish view of what a shoppinig centre will provide, e.g. language assistance, child care
• such a specification does not include a claim for the provision of the services which are being brought together (e.g. bringing together, inter alia, restaurant services, does not include a claim for the restaurant services themselves)
• the PAN doesn’t cover the bringing together of services in a manner other than a shopping centre – these will be judged on a case-by-case basis

The IPKat welcomes the IPO’s flexible and realistic approach to what a shopping centre may offer. He’s puzzled though by a couple of things. First, virtual shopping centres are covered, but other forms of bringing together services aren’t. Is there really an accepted definition of what a virtual shopping centre is (and so what falls within the PAN)? What about price comparison sites? Google Shopping? Sites like Nectar which provide links to various shops with the aim of allowing you to collect reward points? Secondly, the PAN requires clearly defined services. Now normally the IPKat is all for clarity, but does it really matter here if the key services is a shopping centre: it’s the bringing together of retail services which will be the main focus when comparing similarity of services, particularly since the PAN explicitly states that any registration would not cover the other services being brought together per se.

Welsh patent applications: the results are in!

A couple of days ago the IPKat asked his readers how many patent applications they thought might have been filed in Welsh at the UK-IPO since this possibility was made available by the new Patents Rule 2007, offering a prize of a bunch of daffodils to the first one to get the right answer. 

(right: Tufty's bodyguard Pod guards the limited supply of daffodils at Tufty's country residence)

The IPKat received a huge range of guesstimates, ranging all the way up to a rather optimistic 4,587. One anonymous commenter even tried to work out how many might have been filed by searching on espacenet (a futile exercise, of course, since very few applications since December 2007 will have been published by now anyway). Most people, however, seemed to think that the number would be very low. 

The IPKat can now exclusively reveal that the very first commenter got the answer spot on. Commiserations go to Guy Veysey, Louisa McDonnell and John Collins, who came in just too late.  Exactly zero applications have been filed at the UK-IPO in Welsh over the past 13 months. Well done to whoever anonymous person made that comment.  A large bunch of daffodils is waiting at Tufty's country pad for you to come and collect in a few weeks, once they have had a chance to grow.  

On a more serious note, the IPKat wonders what the point was in putting the effort in to change the law in the UK to provide the option of filing and prosecuting applications in Welsh, and provide a facility at the IPO to deal with them, when it was clearly an option that nobody was asking for, and nobody has in fact seen the need to use.  And in case anybody pipes up about the Welsh Language Act or similar, the IPKat would like to first be pointed to the exact legal requirement that made the change necessary. 

Merpel wonders whether all this fuss the IPKat is making will perhaps prompt some Welsh-fluent patent attorney to file one just to spoil the record.

Tufty says he just wants to keep hold of his daffodils for now.

Important news for Welsh patentees

Ever since the Patents Rules 1995 were replaced by the Patents Rules 2007, the IPKat has been wondering how popular the newly available facility for filing and prosecuting UK patent applications in Welsh as well as English would be (for some background and sometimes irate IPKat commentary on the subject, see here, here, here and here).  He was thinking recently that the time had come to count up how many applications had actually been filed in Welsh since the new rules came into force back in December 2007.  

Rather than wading through the many thousands of application details published on the patent register, the IPKat thought that he would use the facility offered by the IPO under the UK Freedom of Information Act to ask the question directly, since he suspected that the IPO will have been keeping a close eye on this important issue anyway, and would have all the relevant details to hand.  The IPO have now, in double quick time, kindly come back with an answer.  The IPKat doesn't want to give the game away to everyone just yet, so he will let his readers make educated guesses as to the exact number.  The first person to leave a comment with the exact number wins a bunch of daffodils. 

UPDATE: See the result in the IPKat's later post here.

Don't fall into the Patent Pit!

A new, and rather disturbing, feature recently appeared on the website of the UK-IPO (thanks to G for pointing the IPKat to it).  This is, on the face of it at least, a rather harmless game called 'Patent Pit', which seems to have been rather heavily inspired by (though obviously in no way infringing any intellectual property in) the BBC's Dragons' Den.  Instead of the real life characters of Theo, Peter, Duncan, Deborah and James, however, we have the cartoon characters of Novelty Norvello, Inventive Igor and Marketing Marion, with the game being hosted by Evan Davies lookalike, Filament Fred.  IPKat readers may recall that these characters came to light recently in the form of UK trade mark applications made last month, at which point we were only previously aware of Fred's existence in the form of the grotesque guide to the IPO's Annual Review of 2007 (danger: BIG pdf download).  

The game itself involves picking an 'invention' (and trying not to pick a 'non-invention', such as Beethoven's fifth symphony on a clearly patentable tape recorder- the less said about this bit, the better), and then getting it past all three dragons by showing it to be novel, inventive and worth selling (since when has this been a requirement for getting a patent?).  

The IPKat wasted an enjoyable few minutes playing the game, and managed to get maximum points by picking the lava lamp and answering the rather odd questions in the way he thought they needed to be answered (just like taking the UK finals then, really).  One particular point, however, made him think about whether the Patent Office (to use their proper title) have really thought all this through as an educational tool, which presumably it is intended to be.  The picture below, where Norvello demonstrates the principle of novelty, illustrates the point:

The caption reads "So to prove novelty, you [i.e. the player] have to search as many sources as you can to make sure no other invention shares the same features or functions as yours".  Now, the IPKat may be being a bit picky here, but he was under the distinct impression that it was the primary job of the Patent Office to search as many sources as they could to make sure that no other invention shared the same features or functions.  Obviously it's all very good if a patent applicant has already done a fair bit of searching and not found anything that anticipates his invention, but it is a bit misleading, to say the least, to suggest that this would be enough to get a patent, or indeed that it was the applicant's responsibility to prove novelty. 

Does all this suggest that the UK Patent Office, like the USPTO, in reality (rather than in cartoon land) wants to give up on searching for prior art and instead leave examination to the applicant? The IPKat thinks we should be told the truth.  

Merpel wonders what happened to Clarity Clare; she couldn't find her anywhere in the Pit.  Has clarity gone out the window as a patentability requirement (to be replaced by marketability perhaps)?

Is UK business too complacent to IP crime? IBIL Dilution seminar

Business attitudes to IP report

The UK IPO has indeed been busy. They have released research commissioned by its IP Crime Group that shows that 'shows that many businesses are not doing anything to ensure they protect their intellectual property'.

This is a BAD THING it seems. In the words of the press release:

Intellectual property is at the heart of so many businesses. It needs to be understood, protected, and respected [IPKat comment: does this remind anyone of the WIPO World Intellectual Property Day's theme that authors/creators 'deserve our admiration, our protection, and our respect'?] - both that which belongs to the company and the IP of others. It is therefore worrying that the research showed that:

• 40% of businesses surveyed took no practical action such as trade mark registration or employee training to ensure their and others IP is protected.
• A third of businesses surveyed were not aware whether goods sold on their premises by external traders were legitimate or not.
• Out of those who knew that employees were selling DVDs at work, nearly a fifth knew that these were counterfeit and still allowed such illegal activity to take place.
• Similarly, over a quarter of respondents do not make staff aware that they must not download illegal content at work.

• 
  

The IPKat has his suspicions about this report, or at least the way that the IPO has represented its findings. For a start, the Kat thinks there's a not so hidden agenda emerging from the questions that have been asked - i.e. you think IP's important, so why do you allow your employees to abuse other people's? More fundamentally, there seems to be an assumption throughout this report and the way that it has been presented that employers should act as policemen, protecting other people's IP against their employees.

He's not sure whether it's so worrying that 40% of businesses don't protect their IP. Many businesses just won't have IP at the core of their business. Your local newsagent isn't going to file many patents. He's not even likely to register a trade mark. However, there is protection in place (such as passing off) which comes into action automatically. When one looks at the statistics of business attitudes to infringement of other people's IP in the workplace, it doesn't look at bad as the IPO has suggested. Take for example the third point above - 20% knowledge of sale of fake DVDs. This has to be put in context. This is 20% of the people who knew that DVDs were being sold in their workplace. This was only 20% of those surveyed. In other words, 20% of 20% of the survey of 500 people (i.e. 20/500 if the IPKat's maths are correct) knew of such sales taking place.

Dilution event at IBIL, University College London, Bloomsbury

UCL's Institute of Brand and Innovation Law is hosting its Brands Seminar on 11 February 2009, 4.00pm for a 4.30pm start.

The title is Trade Mark Infringement without Confusion: Dilution. Speakers are:

• Professor J Thomas McCarthy on the US perspective
• Professor Charles Gielen on the Benelux approach
• Professor David Llewelyn on what the UK makes of it all.
• 
  

In the chair is Lord Justice Jacob.

To sign up, please click here, but be warned - places are going fast!

Not in front of the children!

The IPKat's old friend and highly respected trade mark attorney Sally Cooper is highly indignant with regard to current UK-IPO trade mark registration practice. She writes:

"Can I add my voice to the growing (sound)wave of those beginning to wonder whether all is well at UK-IPO? Both Application M973025 for ASSHOLE for services in Class 38 and Application 2490640 for QRGASM (read that carefully) for goods in Classes 9, 16, 18, 25 and 26 were published in Journal 6757 on 17 October 2008. In my role as a good citizen, I wrote (separate) letters of observations to the Trade Marks Registry mentioning public policy/accepted principles of morality. Both letters were acknowledged by the Registry, which advised that my own letters had added nothing not already known to the Registry on examination/decision to allow applications to proceed to publication.

I cannot provide this correspondence because, being angry, I shredded all of same (though presumably it will have found its way to the Registry's own (unshredded) files). I'm still angry".

Class 38? That's telecommunications, says the IPKat. Not a problem with descriptive marks there unless you've got real problems with your service provider.

Right: currently licensed to the UK-IPO, on whose home page they lurk, are the Wallace and Gromit images in danger of tarnishment through association with applications for trade mark registration?

Merpel adds, in the light of the Grand Board of Appeal ruling, in Case R 0495/2005 G Application of Kenneth (t/a Screw You) [2007] ETMR 7, it's difficult to say that there's such a thing as a sign that's inherently offensive and contrary to good morality right across the Nice Classification: while A*****E will be regarded by most consumers as extremely unpleasant for most classes of goods and services, it's possible to think of relevant consumers of specific goods and services who might find the concept a turn-on. Neither the IPKat nor Merpel are exactly in favour of Q****M as a trade mark either -- the only thing that can be said about it is that, if it should ever come before an OHIM Board of Appeal in a Community trade mark opposition, they can almost visualise the paragraph of the decision which, in dealing with aural similarity, explains how this word would be pronounced.

The new UK-IPO cartoon crew

A couple of days ago, the IPKat posted this about the new logo/name for the Patent Office. As one commenter confirmed, this is no joke.  The Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills, John Denham MP (not David Lammy - see comment below), applied for a UK trade mark for the new logo on 7 November 2008.  The application has now been published as TM number 2501853.

Another curious IPKat reader, Guy Selby-Lowndes, then looked a little further and noticed that, two days before applying for the new logo mark, five other applications were filed to register what appear to be the name and appearance of various cartoon characters, all in classes 09, 16, 28, 35 and 38.  Here they are, in glorious black and white:

TM Number 2501719:

TM Number 2501757:

TM Number 2501761:

TM Number 2501756:

TM Number 2501755:

The IPKat and Guy both wonder what the Secretary of State could possibly be up to.  Is he intending to publish an IP comic?  Will this be a development of the comic-style 2007 Annual Review, featuring Filament Fred (but none of the other characters)? If so, why the need for trade mark protection?  Is this all part of a masterplan to educate the children of this nation into the ways of patenting (the names certainly seem to evoke the various necessary conditions to making patents work)? Can other readers shed any further light on this? Merpel thinks the characters look a bit scary, and is particularly worried what Norvello is intending to do with that big spike he is carrying.

Hello? Is that the Property Office for Intellectuals?

The IPKat is not sure whether this is a joke, so he will let his readers figure it out for themselves.  According to an anonymous tip-off, the UK-IPO (the IPKat still prefers its proper title of 'The Patent Office') is to change its name again. This is, as readers will know, the second name change in just over a year.

The current logo.

The new logo.

Some may think the new logo is quite pretty. Others might even think that the change is in the logo only, and the name remains the same.  The IPKat, however, agrees with the tipper-off that something appears to be fundamentally wrong with it. The new logo appears to suggest that they (the patent office, that is) are the property office for intellectuals, rather than the office for intellectual property. The IPKat is now confused.  Merpel, however, is more concerned with that crown mark, which looks vaguely like the Office is getting royal pretensions. What does it all mean?

UPDATE (28/11/08): It's true! See here (before it all disappears to be replaced with something even more incomprehensible).

The UK-IPO will destroy your documents

The UK-IPO has just issued a press release with the rather worrying title: "Destruction of patent documents filed at the Office".  This is actually all about the gradual transformation (which has been going on for some time now) of the Office into an all-electronic system, at least as far as patent prosecution goes. 

As from the end of next March (or thereabouts), the UK-IPO will be introducing a "scan and shred" policy for documents submitted to them.  Most things submitted will be kept only as a scanned copy, and everything submitted will eventually be destroyed.  

The IPKat is glad to see that the UK-IPO appears to have thought this through very carefully, and have considered what will happen, for example, to colours and greyscales in as-filed drawings, which would otherwise be lost when scanned.  There is also a safeguard for applications filed without an application fee, although the IPKat fails to see why these should be treated any differently from those where the fee is paid on filing.  After all, the law only requires the application fee to be paid within the first 12 months, doesn't it?

Another important point to note, and one that most patent-wise people will already be aware of, is that one should never send originals to the UK-IPO (assignments being a good example).  They don't need them in any case, but as from next year do not expect anything sent to be sent back, except perhaps in very small pieces. 

Tufty would like to know why he can't have his patent application for multi-coloured cat toys published as he intended.  Couldn't the system be brought up to date in this way too? Trade marks and designs can be in colour, so why not patents?