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News • IP News This Month
November 16, 2009
Welcome to CIPP's "IP News This Week", your 5-minute report of the latest IP news from around the world. IP News This Week arrives every Monday (most of the time!) and contains a review of all major newspapers and online IP sources. Comments? Send them to: jeff.roberts*at*mcgill.ca
Top 3 Stories
Google revises Books settlement with limits on foreign works, fiduciary scheme for orphan works and new pricing provisions; critics dismiss as “sleight of hand”
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Bad day for business patents as SCOTUS justices ridicule legal arguments; incredulous Scalia asks if Horse Whisperer methods should be patentable
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Likelihood of confusion? Porsche targets Crocs with trademark action for christening new line of ugly plastic shoes with same name as luxury sports car model
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Canada
The Globe has a good write-up of flamboyant copyright activist Cory Doctorow’s recent prance through Toronto where he spoke on the topic of “How to Destroy the Book”
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United States
A WIPO panel rejected a Fox News conspiracy monger’s trademark claims against a satirical site called glennbeckrapedandmurderedayounggirlin1990.com
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The new USPTO director has created a new interactive blog to communicate with patent types about policy questions
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In a major win for brand holders against cyber-squatters, an arbitrator ruled that FreeCreditReport.com had rights to 1,017 domains that were similar to its name
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A US District court granted summary judgment to Apple in its copyright suit against Psystar who had been selling Mac clones running the OS X operating system
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The publicity hound behind the Obama Hope poster has new help from Harvard profs in the copyright suit brought by AP; his legal team from Stanford ditched him for blatantly lying to them about the origins of the underlying photo
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An appellate court affirmed that funkmeiser George Clinton has copyright to the lyrics “bow wow wow, yippie yo yippie yea”
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Two IP lawyers from DC state in the WSJ that the Google Books should really be about whether fair use protects search engines who cache content for indexing purposes
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Europe
News Corp mogul Rupert Murdoch continued his recent copyright tirades by suggesting the BBC is infringing on material from his newspapers
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The digital content editor of the Guardian has a should-read on what Murdoch might really be up to
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Britain’s broadcast regulator is ready to nix the BBC’s scheme to create a DRM regime for HD that would have required set-top box makers to encrypt TV listings
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A German court referred to the ECJ an affair brought by Greenpeace over when stem cells are patentable; the case has big implications for biotech research in Europe
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There has been a big spike in IP cases, especially copyright ones, brought before the High Court
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International
India is ranting to WIPO about an alleged campaign being wrought by multinationals against its generics drug industry
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Oxford is back in court against a publisher who it claims has violated an undertaking to cease flogging infringing copies of its Kiswahili dictionaries in East Africa
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A YouTube lawyer visited Australia to encourage the country to make its copyright regime more friendly for new business models
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IP News This Week is written and conceived by Jeff Roberts (www.jeffjohnroberts.com). Any views expressed do not necessarily reflect the diverse opinions of CIPP members