Indonesia leaves Hague system

Indonesia is leaving the Hague Agreement, effective in one year's time (3rd June 2010, to be precise), according to a WIPO Notice.
Indonesia has been a Hague member for over half a century, allowing people the satisfaction of ticking the box covering the world's fourth most populous country (and largest Muslim country). However, it is only since 2001 (impelled to it by TRIPS) that Indonesia has actually had a registered design law - so presumably, before that time, all those box ticks were just a waste of money (which perhaps could have been made clearer on WIPO's forms).
According to the excellent study by Suratno and Tanaka, when it did arrive the Indonesian design law was a pretty poor fit with Hague anyway, in fact making no mention of it. Swimming against the tide, Indonesia introduced novelty searching in 2004, which made the fit even worse as the 1934 text of Hague to which they had acceeded is a pure deposit system.
The 1999 Geneva Act would be a better fit since it permits countries to search and examine, and perhaps they have denounced the 1934 Act merely in order to accede to the 1999 one - but it is far from clear that this is so, as one would have expected the announcements to occur together.
Does anyone know more of the background?

Serbian design & copyright changes in sight

Our friends at S.D. Petosevic, a trans-Balkan IP firm, report that changes to Serbian design, copyright and chip protection laws are under consultation. On designs, the changes "intend to bring Serbian IP legislation in line with the international and European regulations, namely the TRIPS Agreement, the Geneva Act of the Hague Agreement, and various EU directives". For example, a right of appeal is to be introduced. We will keep you posted.

Reform of UK design litigation

The very wonderful Ipkat has a link to the User Group proposals to reform the Patents County Court, for lower costs and higher speed.
The PCC was set up for precisely this, but an unintended consequence of the Woolf Reforms was to turn it into a High Court clone, with little scope for cheaper procedures better suited to SMEs or litigants in person.
Since the appointment of Judge Fysh, author of the 5th Edition of Russell Clarke on designs and one of our great design jurists, there has been a policy of routing design cases to the PCC, and when Section 27A of the Registered Designs Act comes in, he will also get all appeals from the Registry (which currently go to the Registered Designs Appeal Tribunal). We will then have a unified design court for England and Wales under Judge Fysh.
Sounds great - except that, as CIPA said back in 2005 when the idea was floated, the costs regime would go from nominal costs on a scale as in the Intellectual Property Office and on Trade Mark appeals to the Appointed Person, to the much higher spending, higher risk High Court system of costs, vastly increasing the downside risk of litigation.
Well, I am delighted to say that the proposals involve going to the scale fee system, not just for design appeals as CIPA suggested but for everything. I think that will really make a difference - UK justice will become affordable to SMEs again.

If you agree, please send your comments to:

Philip Westmacott,
Bristows
100 Victoria Embankment
London EC4Y 0DH
or by email to:
philip.westmacott@bristows.com

Designs in Iran

According to NJQ and Associates, Iran's design law became effective on 10 March 2009; it is now possible to get registered designs in Iran. The term is 5 years, renewable in the usual 5 year increments up to 15 years.

Joint ownership of designs

Joint ownership of IP is a mess, and my advice is always "Don't go there!". But sometimes it is unavoidable, and that tends also to be when no prior agreement has been drawn up to regulate the rights of the parties. So, if you are a co-owner, can you, without prior permission,

• Work the invention yourself (and have someone work it for your "home use")?
• License others non-exclusively?
• Assign your share?
• Sue third parties?

AIPPI's Q194 reviews the position worldwide, and the conclusion seems to be that each country has a different set of answers, and in many cases the answer is different for patents than for copyright, and unknown, except by analogy, for designs. And even there, it isn't clear whether patents or copyright are the appropriate basis for analogy. And as if that wasn't confusing enough, what happens where the co-owners are in different countries - as is often the case where the final production design work is done in Taiwan or China?

The Design Law Wiki carries an article analysing the EU position. It isn't pretty, but , very broadly, most (not all) countries responding allow each individual co-owner to sue separately of the others, but do not allow her to license separately of the others. Which laws apply to a jointly-owned Community Design are determined by the complex, yet incomplete, algorithm of CDR Article 27, for which Spain is the default country. We can only hope that AIPPI succeed in finding a harmonised solution, and that the EU can be persuaded to follow it.