Quiet Hero; Rita Cosby Discovers Her Father's Life With The Polish Resistance In World War II

Former Fox News and MSNBC journalist and current Inside Edition special correspondent Rita Cosby first noticed the scars on her father's body when she was a little girl, but their origin were never referred to for most of her life; in fact, they were never mentioned again.

It remained a mystery until a few years ago, when Ms. Cosby's mother passed away and she found out what her father, who is a native of Poland, endured during the Second World War.

Ms. Cosby visited Good Morning America and spoke to host George Stephanopoulos about her father and the memoir she wrote, Quiet Hero.

Here's the interview, from ABC News.

Poland in the Alicante spotlight

Poland is the country under the spotlight in this month's country-by-country review of registered Community design activity in OHIM's Alicante News. News from Poland is encouraging, at least when viewed from a deckchair one of Alicante's sunny beaches. Says the review:

"With more than 9,200 registrations since 2003, the registered Community design has been consistently popular with Poland undertakings. There were around 2,600 RCD filings last year with classes 6, 25 and 9 in highest demand.

Once again, the majority of Polish filers prefer the online route, with over 93% now using e-filing. Around 4% of designs come by mail, and 2% by fax".

The feature also lists Poland's most prolific Community design applicants -- and the Top Ten firms of representatives of Poland-based applicants.

And now for a Polish round-up

Only a week ago, Class 99 wrote: "It's not often that Class 99 gets to report on design law developments in Poland". Well, either because he has been inspired by design law or delighted to receive so many click-throughs to his own site from Class 99's design law addicts, Polish IP blogger Tomasz Rychlicki has struck again, with his "Selected and short review of Polish case law on industrial designs" (here). Tomasz introduces his article with a warning:

"Below, you will find couple of judgments decided inadministrative proceedings. Finding cases that were decided in civil proceedings is more problematic because they are not so often publicly available".

This is a problem not just in Poland but in most of the EU's medium-to-smaller national jurisdictions, from which decisions on matters such as registrability or cancellation can often be found but valuable decisions regarding the application of tests of infringement, and of correlated evidential and procedural issues, can be very hard to find.

Design, freedom and Polish law

It's not often that Class 99 gets to report on design law developments in Poland, but celebrated Polish English-language blogger (and Class 46 team member) Tomasz Rychlicki has just provided this comment on a decision of the Voivodeship Administrative Court (VAC), Warsaw, judgment of 21 July 2009, case act signature VI SA/Wa 518/09. In that case the court ruled that, where the scope of creative freedom is greater, the assessment of the originality of the design may justify the thesis that the differences should have an easily-discernible character. In contrast, in the case of a design where there exists a small range of creative freedom, even small differences will not remain unnoticed by the oriented user. Says Tomasz, the court explains that

"The design must be different from the pattern already known and cannot create the impression that a product of such a form of a design (product) has already been seen. It is necessary to study compared designs, including the overall impression which is triggered by the design in terms of the so-called “oriented user” and the term “oriented user” indicates the person who uses the product/design on a permanent basis, so it is not, nor is the average consumer, or the average expert".