Jerry Seinfeld mocks the British royals

Jerry Seinfeld on Kate Middleton and Prince William:

It's a circus act. It's an absurd act. You know. It's a dress up. It's a classic English thing of let's play dress up. Let's pretend these are special people.

Via these sites.

UK Litigation Statistics - we stand corrected

Trevor Cook of Bird & Bird points out that the EMW Picton Howell litigation stats we quoted in our recent post tell an unrepresentative part of the whole story. The Lord Chancellor's Dept/DCA/Ministry of Justice statistics on IP litigation (which we summarise in tabular form) show that 2006 was a terrible baseline year to choose - the increases in 2007 and 2008 merely restore the position earlier in the decade. These and many other fascinating things are to be found in Trevor's very readable "Users' Guide to Patents". Thanks, Trevor, for putting it in perspective. Are these variations statistically significant at all, or just noise? Comments welcome as always.

Cape Verde gets its priorities right

The Designs (Convention Countries) (Amendment) Order 2009 (SI 2009/2747) coming into force on 12 November 2009, adds Cape Verde to the lists of Convention countries from which priority may be claimed in the UK.
For more background, see David Pearce's page on s13 f the Registered Designs Act 1949, on the Design Law Wiki.

New UK design practice note on priority

The UK IPO has today posted a new practice notice, Designs Practice Notice DPN 1/09, on a simplified priority claim procedure. Here are CIPA's Designs and Copyright Committee comments on a draft version, by way of background.
Essentially, where you're just filing the identical design in the UK, you can so declare on a special form and thus avoid the need to file a certified copy. Interesting issues arise in relation to the difference (if there is one) between identical representations and an identical design, which the IPO discuss in their DPN. There may also be unresolved questions about the effect of other elements of a design application, such as the identified goods/title.
By way of background, courtesy of the IPO, of UK designs filed in Q1 2009, only 4.1% had convention claims (of these 40% were filed by unrepresented applicants and 60% through agents) as opposed to more than 50% before the introduction of the Community design system. Thus, though a welcome simplification, this measure is unlikely to have major impact on most design system users.

Working Groups cease work

After many years, the Registry Practice Working Group (RPWG), which had inherited the mantle of the Designs Practice Working Group (DWPG), has now been dissolved. This wasn't at the users' request - these were, in my personal experience, very useful groups.
It was announced at the last (in both senses) meeting of RPWG in June. "Higher level" issues will now be discussed in a new forum called the Trade Marks and Designs Policy Forum. This will deal with policy (as the name implies) and also "significant legal and practice changes". However, "minor issues relating to registry operations and practice will be dealt with elsewhere" - apparently in an online forum.
What is one to make of this? UK trade mark and, particularly, design filings are much more by unrepresented applicants - domestic SMEs and individuals - than in the past, as large companies and foreign applicants have used the European or International routes. I suppose, therefore, that there is perceived to be rather less need to meet representatives. On the other hand, there is no one else to represent the unrepresented.
Perhaps the Registry has merely tired of discussing "minor", or what I'd call bread-and-butter, issues in person. I am generally a fan of electronic forum use. They enable wider consultations. However, I don't think they substitute for human contact. The RPWG and DPWG meetings were a two way street, and what we will miss is not what the Registry gets from us - we can say anything we need electronically - but the chance to recieve information and, more importantly, the feeling that we have been heard, and perhaps understood. I may have got this all wrong, but this move is close enough in time to the IPO's "IP Complaints" fiasco for it to feel like the Registry is trying to disengage from the professions - and if that is right, I suspect that, in the long term, both sides (and therefore, in the long run, applicants and the public) will lose out.

UK Designs - Priority Practice Change

The UK IPO announced at the most recent RPWG meeting that it is considering changing its practice to permit filing a declaration that the design is identical to a claimed priority filing, so as to avoid the need to file a certified priority document. Sounds sensible enough, but are substantive and procedural differences worldwide so great that a similar form would have a dissimilar effect and vice versa? And is it right that third parties should be unable to look at the priority document?
Comments welcomed, either here or to me.