Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law (CIPIL) Podcast

Jennifer Davis (University of Cambridge) gave an evening seminar entitled "The problem with the average consumer in European trade mark law" on Thursday 19 February 2015 at the Faculty of Law as a guest of CIPIL (the Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law).

The talk considers the problem of identifying the average consumer in EU trade mark law. It suggests that his or her position in case law relating to both distinctiveness and confusion is increasingly uncertain. It considers explanations for this uncertainty. These include challenges to neo-classical economic orthodoxy, changes in retailing including the rise of internet shopping and the expansion of the EU itself.The talk then considers whether the concept of the average consumer might be replaced by a more evidence based approach to assessing both distinctiveness and confusion.

For more information see the CIPIL website at http://www.cipil.law.cam.ac.uk

Manuel Desantes of the University of Alicante, gave an evening seminar entitled "The New European Patent Environment: an Opportunity or a Failure?" on Thursday 12 February 2015 at the Faculty of Law as a guest of CIPIL (the Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law).

Abstract: The non-existence of an actual EU patent system is an important obstacle for the achievement of the internal market. For the first time, after more than 50 years of negotiations, an agreement between most of the Member States of the EU has been achieved in order to attribute both unitary effects to European patents in their territories, and exclusive competence to a newly created Unified Patent Court for all sort of infringements and actions for revocation of European patents. The experience is unique in the history of private law, but it does not come at any cost: it explains at the same time until what extent the European construction becomes more and more intergovernmental and less and less institutional, marking a dangerous tendency to move from a delegation/supervision scheme to a simple replacement of the EU institutions by the Member States themselves. European Union, quo vadis?

Speaker: Manuel Desantes is Professor of Law, University of Alicante (Spain), since 1992, Member of Counsel of the IP firm ELZABURU, and Vice-President of the Spanish Jury of Design. Professor Desantes served in the past as Vice-President and President in acting of the University of Alicante (1996-1998), as Member of the Legal Service of the European Commission, responsible for Intellectual Property and Electronic Commerce (1998-2001), and as Vice-President (Directorate-General 5, Legal and International Affairs) of the European Patent Office (2001-2008). He founded and was the Director of the Magister Lvcentinvs (Intellectual Property and Information Technology Master's Degree), University of Alicante (1994-1997).

For more information see the CIPIL website at http://www.cipil.law.cam.ac.uk

Professor Thomas Cottier of the University of Bern, gave an evening seminar entitled "International Trade and Intellectual Property Protection: Past, Present and Future" on Thursday 29 January 2015 at the Faculty of Law as a guest of CIPIL (the Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law).

Abstract: The talk will deal with the fundamentals in the relation between Intellectual Property (IP) protection and international trade. With a focus on the multilateral system in the context of the World Trade Oraganization (WTO), it considers the idea of fair trade and what it means for protecting IP rights around the globe. This inevitably leads to a discussion of the origins and rationale of the WTO Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) in whose negotiations Thomas Cottier has been deeply involved. He examines how TRIPS has developed in the last 20 years - driven in particular by external influences. Using Competition Law as an example, Professor Cottier compares how issues affected by IP protection can be regulated within and outside TRIPS.

Speaker: Thomas Cottier is a Professor of European and International Economic Law at the University of Mern. He was the managing director of the World Trade Institute (WTI) from 2000-2014 and directed the national research programme on trade law and policy (NCCR Trade Regulation: From Fragmentation to Coherence), located at the WTI. He was educated at the University of Bern, University of Michigan Law School, and was a visiting fellow at Cambridge University, UK. He taught at the University of St. Gallen, Neuchatel and the Geneva Graduate Institute in Geneva and also regularly teaches at the Europa Institut Saarbrucken, Germany, Paris I (Sorbonne), Turin University, Italy and Wuhan University, China. He was a member of the Swiss National research Council from 1997 to 2004 and served on the Board of the International Plant Genetic resources Institute (IPGRI), Rome, during the same period. He served the Baker & McKenzie law firm of Counsel from 1998 to 2005.

Professor Cottier has a long-standing involvement in GATT/WTO activities. He served on the Swiss negotiating team of the Uruguay Round from 1986 to 1993, first as Chief negotiator on dispute settlement and subsidies for Switzerland and subsequently as Chief negotiator on TRIPs. He was the Deputy-Director General of the Swiss Intellectual Property Office and served as a member or chair of several GATT and WTO panels. Professor Cottier has written and publishes on a wide range of trade, European law and international law issues. His main research interests are in constitutional theory of multilevel governance and theory of international law, external relations of the EU, intellectual property, innovation and the challenges of climate change in international economic law.

For more information see the CIPIL website at http://www.cipil.law.cam.ac.uk

Professor Martin Senftleben (VU University Amsterdam) gave a seminar entitled "Protecting Mickey Mouse and the Mona Lisa in Perpetuity? - The Need to Leave Cultural Material Free From Trade Mark Protection" on Tuesday 18 November 2014 at the Faculty of Law as a guest of CIPIL (the Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law).

Professor Senftleben is an expert on the law of copyright and trade marks, and is author of a book on the 'three -step test.'

Listeners to this seminar will benefit particularly from reading the following: Senftleben, Martin, 'Public Domain Preservation in EU Trademark Law - A Model for Other Regions?' (September 16, 2013). The Trademark Reporter, Vol. 103, No. 4 (2013), pp. 775-827. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2331598

For more information see the CIPIL website at http://www.cipil.law.cam.ac.uk

Simon Davies (partner and patent attorney at D Young & Co.) and Julian Potter (partner, patent attorney and trade mark attorney at WP Thompson) gave an evening seminar entitled "Software patents - legal and commercial perspectives" on Thursday 1 May 2014 at the Faculty of Law as a guest of CIPIL (the Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law).

For more information see the CIPIL website at http://www.cipil.law.cam.ac.uk

Professor Kevin Outterson (Professor of Health Law, Bioethics and Human Rights, Boston University and Visiting Fellow at Chatham House, Centre on Global Health Security) gave an evening seminar entitled "The legal ecology of resistance, or why normal IP rules shouldn't apply to antibiotics" on Thursday 24 April 2014 at the Faculty of Law as a guest of CIPIL (the Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law).

For more information see the CIPIL website at http://www.cipil.law.cam.ac.uk

Samira Ahmed discusses the ownership of street art with Mary McCarthy, Director of MM Contemporary Arts; Professor Lionel Bently, barrister and copyright expert on intellectual property, and street artist and gallery owner, Pure Evil. Ex-ITV CEO Stewart Purvis on the rise of indie news organisation Vice. Plus artist Jeremy Millar, film critic Chris Darke and Habda Rashid, Assistant Curator at The Whitechapel Gallery discuss French film maker Chris Marker's life and work.

Courtesy of BBC Radio 3

Naomi Alderman, Geoff Mulgan and Lionel Bently join Philip Dodd to explore the ever-changing meaning of Originality. Nicholas Penny, director of the National Gallery, discusses the meaning of greatness in art in front of the new exhibition - Veronese: Magnificence in Renaissance Venice. And as Simon Stephens's new play Birdland opens, the playwright talks inspirations, death and originality.

Courtesy of BBC Radio 3

Christopher Rennie-Smith, of the Board of Appeal - European Patent Office, gave an evening seminar entitled "Bioscience, patent law, and the generally-overlooked requirement of industrial application" on Thursday 13 February 2014 at the Faculty of Law as a guest of CIPIL (the Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law).

The requirement that an invention be capable of industrial application – the third limb of patent law’s ‘trinity’, along with novelty and inventive step – is a provision that traditionally reared its head in the context of perpetual motion machines, flying saucers or frictionless water wheels. More recently, and of far more economic significance, it has been directed at bioscience inventions. Christopher Rennie-Smith, chairman of a Board of Appeal handling biotechnology cases at the European Patent Office, will share his insights on the fascinating question of whether early stage biotechnology research, often in silico, is better characterised as invention or research programme, and the implications this has for scientific research. In the same context, he will also talk from experience of the parallel decision-making processes of domestic courts and the EPO Boards of Appeal, the increasing role of the Court of Justice of the EU and the future Unitary Patent Court.

Christopher Rennie-Smith is a Chairman of a Board of Appeal and member of the Enlarged Board of Appeal at the European Patent Office. He was previously a lecturer in law at Sheffield University and then practiced for over twenty years as a lawyer in London, specializing in intellectual property litigation.

For more information see the CIPIL website at http://www.cipil.law.cam.ac.uk

Julius Stobbs, Founder, Stobbs, gave a lunchtime seminar entitled "What makes a trade mark inherently distinctive?" on Thursday 30 January 2014 at the Faculty of Law as a guest of CIPIL (the Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law).

Prior to founding Stobbs, Julius was Head of Trade Marks at Ipulse. He was also a Partner at a major European firm for seven years. He has extensive experience in contentious trade mark proceedings. In the UK his experience includes many appearances before the Appointed Person, and he is the most often heard trade mark attorney in inter partes proceedings at the UK Intellectual Property Office. He also has experience of proceedings before the UK High Court and the Patents County Court. Julius also has vast experience of dealing with oppositions, cancellations and appeals before OHIM and of further appeals to the General Court and the European Court of Justice.

For more information see the CIPIL website at http://www.cipil.law.cam.ac.uk