Intellectual Property Law

Meanwhile, the IPKat notes that one of the most obscure IP blogs, The SPC Blog, has just notched up its 100th email subscriber. The SPC Blog is narrowly focused on the law and practice relating to supplementary protection certificates for pharmaceutical and plant protection patents. Considering that it only started this summer, and that it has been aggregating posts at a gentle rate of between one and two a week -- not surprising since this is an area in which relatively little happens -- the 100 mark for email readers represents a remarkably speedy take-up.

After more than a decade of experience with the concept of confusing similarity under the harmonised European law and the Community trade mark, the IPKat thought he'd seen everything and was quite unshockable. Not so, it seems. Via Likelihood of Confusion he discovered this gem from the TTABlog , which picked up a US TTAB ruling that the marks AMMIRAGLIA and FLAGSHIP were confusingly similar in respect of alcoholic beverages. Merpel says, I reckon that the relevant consumer would have to drink a hell of a lot of vodka before confusing those two.

Quite by chance, when looking for something completely different, the IPKat stumbled across The Patent Search Blog, masterminded by the British Library's Steve van Dulken. IPKat team member Jeremy's path and Steve's have criss-crossed on odd occasions since patents first entered Steve's life in a big professional way back in 1987. Ostensibly a weblog focusing on the lighter side of patents, The Patent Search Blog has its very serious side too. The IPKat hopes this blog, now in its second year, goes from strength to strength.

Full post as published by IPKat on August 25, 2008 (boomark / email).