A quick note that may be of interest to Actuate’s clients: Austrade has recently changed the Export Market Development Grant scheme (”EMDG“) so that eligible businesses can be reimbursed for certain IP-related expenses (including trade mark and patent attorney fees) in relation to overseas protection.

Welcome back to the Intellectual Property Blog. Its written by the team here at Actuate IP, an Australian intellectual property practice. As patent attorneys, trade mark attorneys and intellectual property lawyers, we are specialists in the field but more importantly passionate about what we do. We draw inspiration from working with smart people and companies across a broad range of technologies.

Innovation drives growth and benefits society, so its a great motivator for us to be involved in this area of law.

As you can see, we have had a break over the past few months from contributions. But we can now safely say that there will now be regular weekly contributions (at least 2 to 3 contributions). We had positive feedback previously, so we will continue our fresh take and commentary on Australian IP developments and topics.

What can you expect? Commentary on intellectual property news that’s in the media, latest cases and areas of the law that have practical implications for business.

So we look forward to you following our blog. Also feel free to subscribe to this blog and/or our newsletter.

Colin Cheung

IP Australian has recently released figures relating to filings, acceptance and fields that applicants are filing in. It provides some insight as to where Australian’s are heading regarding Intellectual Property. Full results of their internal review can be found here.

The estate of author CS Lewis, have filed a complaint through WIPO’s Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) seeking transfer of the domain name www.NARNIA.mobi from an eleven year old Scottish boy who was to receive it as a birthday gift from his parents. He was a fan of the CS Lewis novels. His parents thought he’d like to use the domain as an e-mail address.

Following up on our recent article regarding the sale of fake luxury Hermes handbags by a woman on eBay which landed the online auction giant in trouble with the French courts, eBay has again been ordered to compensate another luxury brand company for sales of counterfeit goods conducted through its eBay.fr website.

A French court recently convicted online auction giant eBay of selling counterfeit goods through its eBay.fr website and fined the company 20,000 euro (approximately AU$30,000).
The decision resulted from proceedings brought by French luxury products group, Hermes, in connection with listings on the French eBay website advertising the sale of three hand bags by a woman for a total of 3,000 euro. Two of the hand bags were counterfeit. eBay was found to be vicariously liable to the sale of the bags by the woman, who was also ordered to pay damages to Hermes. The amount of damages is not going to make eBay sweat by any means, but the Hermes decision could have repercussions for a number of other legal proceedings faced by eBay (most notably, fashion houses Louis Vuitton and Dior Couture are each currently seeking 20m euro and 17m euro respectively in compensation in a Paris commercial court for similar claims of complacent trafficking in pirated and stolen goods).

The Australian Council on Intellectual Property (ACIP) has announced a review is to be made of what is considered patentable subject matter in Australia.  Specifically, they are going to look into the suitability and sufficiency of the manner of manufacture test as the threshold condition for determining what is patentable subject matter.  Also there is to be a review on the historical requirement that an invention not be generally inconvenient.  

Dr. Francis Gurry, currently a Deputy Director General of the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) has been nominated to become the next Director General of the organisation. Dr Gurry has over 20 years experience working for WIPO, working in all major area of the organisation. More information relating to the nomination of Dr. Gurry can be found in this government media release.
Dr. Gurry’s nomination will be submitted to the General Assembely of WIPO for confirmation in September/October of this year.

WIPO is the United Nations organisation that presides over international matters pertaining to Patents, Trademarks, Designs and other areas of Intellectual Property. WIPO manages filings made under the Patent Co-Operation Treaty and The Madrid Protocol for Trademarks.