Online piracy - takedown MOU published

We have written here before about the tide of pirated products which is lapping at the feet of IP owners.  Much ripoff merchandise is retailed through eBay and other online suppliers, bypassing Customs controls.  We are therefore grateful to Mark Owen of Harbottles for pointing out the EU's announcement of a voluntary MOU, entered into by eBay and Amazon on the one hand and a host of branded goods and other suppliers and organisations on the other, setting up "best practices" in notice and takedown procedures which can be used by owners of trade mark and design rights.
Takedown notices can be powerful tools, but rights-owners will need to act with caution - they are required to indemnify the site provider if a takedown notice is sought, and requesting a takedown notice may constitute a "threat", as in the case of Quads 4 Kids v Colin Campbell [2006] EWHC 2482 (CD), actionable by anyone aggreived (which would include everyone in the supply chain of the alleged pirated item).  Nonetheless, bringing together brand owners and retail sites in a voluntary code is a small win in the war against piracy.

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.