Elvis Is Everywhere! The 75th Anniversary of the Birth of "The King"

Today, January 8, 2010, marks what would have been the 75th birthday of the late Elvis Aaron Presley.

This peanut butter and nanna sandwich is for you....a-huhh-huhhhh....

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".

HS Basketball Star 6'10" and Still Growing - CBS Evening News - CBS News

She's 6'10" tall and may be still growing, and she might be the tallest girl in the world. Marvadene "Bubbles" Anderson came to the United States from Jamaica this past summer. She enrolled at Rutgers Prep in New Jersey, and took up the game of basketball, which she had never played before. Several weeks ago at the Rutgers Athletics Center I was walking towards the concession area, when I walked past the tallest young woman I had ever seen in my life. I had been around many very tall former women basketball players at the RAC almost every week, such as Ann Donovan, and former Rutgers players Sue Wicks and Rebecca Richman.

But I had never seen any woman- ever- taller than young Ms. Anderson.

Striking and memorable are the words the come to mind first.

"Hugh Jee"

Read More....From CBS News

NJ Senate fails to pass gay marriage bill

The New Jersey Senate voted down a same sex marriage bill today by a vote of 20 to 14. One Republican voted for the bill, while six Democrats voted against it. Three Democratic Senators abstained, and two Republican Senators, one of whom is ill, did not attend.

Read More....from The Examiner.com

Germany joins Geneva Act

Germany has signed up to the Geneva Act of the Hague Agreement, which will take effect on February 13th. It is hard to see what benefits this will bring German applicants, as Germany has since 1928 been a member of all previous versions of Hague, and has (via OHIM) been effectively a party to the Hague Act since January 1st 2008. However, for members of Geneva Act-only countries, it will open the "national route" to cover in Germany if that is preferred to going through the OHIM route. One reason for going the national route might be to get improved protection for spare parts since Germany has not adopted a "repair clause" under its national design law equivalent to the EU Community Design provisions of CDR Art 110.

Late-filed evidence: sofa, so good ...

The December 2009 issue of OHIM's Alicante News carries a little feature entitled "New evidence in design invalidity proceedings". It reads as follows:

"In a recent decision [15 June 2009 -- more than half a year ago, which is a long time ago in trade mark law but pretty recent if measured in Design Years] concerning a declaration of invalidity of the registered Community design (RCD) No. 456140-0001 the Third Board of Appeal gave a detailed explanation of how to deal with evidence which was not introduced in the first stage of the invalidity proceedings before the Invalidity Division but came up later in the appeal.

The case involved a dispute between two manufacturers of furniture about the novelty of a sofa design called “Eva” allegedly launched on the market before the date of filing of the contested RCD. In this case, the Board of Appeal decided that while it was not obliged to consider evidence submitted late, it could do so if reasonable notice had been given to the parties involved and if, on the face of it, the evidence was likely to be relevant to the outcome of the invalidity case. Since the decision is in Danish, the relevant paragraphs 25 through 30 are cited literally in the following:

25 During the invalidity proceedings and within the set time-limit the appellant argued that the contested RCD lacked novelty and individual character and that it should be refused under Article 25(1)(b) CDR. During the appeal proceedings, i.e. together with the statement of grounds, the appellant submitted some new evidence in support of its previous assertion that an identical design has been made available to the public prior to the date of filing of the RCD and/or that the overall impression that the contested design produces on the informed user does not differ from the overall impression produced on such a user by a prior design which has been made available to the public.

26 In accordance with Article 63(2) CDR the Office may disregard facts or evidence which are not submitted in due time by the parties concerned. However, the Office is not prohibited from taking into account facts and evidence which are submitted or produced late.

27 The Board considers that, in the case at hand, the further evidence is admissible for the following reasons. Firstly, the new evidence was regularly notified to the respondent. The respondent did not, at least explicitly, dispute the possibility to file further evidence. On the contrary, it agreed to the suspension of the proceedings so that the further evidence could be submitted [This suggests that best practice is to make sure a respondent gets to hear of the out-of-time evidence as early as possible; if it doesn't have time to dispute the admissibility of the further evidence, you can't argue that it has been implicitly or explicitly accepted].

28 Secondly, there is no time limit for bringing an invalidity action before the Office and therefore taking into account facts and evidence submitted late by the appellant, could contribute to ensuring that a RCD whose use could later successfully be challenged by means of further invalidity proceedings does not stay on the register [True, but unlikely to appeal to a typical SME which may be reluctant to go through the whole thing again].

29 The Board also finds it appropriate to admit at this stage the new evidence since it is supplementing evidence to the evidence already provided by the appellant during the invalidity proceedings especially concerning the sofa model ‘Eva', and seems, prima facie, to support the appellants previous assertion that an identical design has been made available to the public prior to the date of filing of the RCD and/or that the overall impression that the contested design produces on the informed user does not differ from the overall impression produced on such a user by a prior design which has been made available to the public. This evidence might prove the appellant's assertion and it is, on the face of it, likely to be relevant to the outcome of the invalidity case it has filed. The Board stresses that a prima facie relevance of the evidence does not imply that it is conclusive to the outcome of the present case [Well, that's a relief!].

30 With a view to the above, the Board deems it appropriate to admit the additional evidence filed with the statement of the grounds of the appeal, by exercising its discretionary power, under Article 63(2) CDR".

The decision in question is R 1713/2007-3.

Brit & Tiger & Rick & The Buddha & The Power of Forgiveness

In the wake of FOX News commentator Brit Hume's plea for Tiger Woods to convert to Christianity to obtain forgiveness for his marital infidelities- and abandon the Buddhism that Hume believes Woods practices- CNN's Rick Sanchez tries to find out more about Buddhism for his audience.

Sanchez has scholar and practicing Buddhist Ethan Nichthern on his telecast to learn more, and find out if Buddhism offers a way to forgiveness as offered in Christianity.



More from Rick Sanchez on his CNN blog .

Below, Hume's original comments on Tiger Woods.




So according to Brit Hume, by implication; should a person who has done something grievously wrong start shopping around for which religion has the best deal on forgiveness?

Maybe he should float that same idea on some of America's various Death Rows, where its really appropriate.