People on the move:
- PRESIDENT Ben Goodger
and several of his partners at Oxford-based Dallas Brett have changed letterheads
following the merger of the practice with Rouse & Co. International (RCI) and
its associated firm, Willoughby & Partners. The existing partnership of Dallas
Brett will be dissolved and the practice will become RCI’s second UK office.
Ben and Anna Booy
will join Willoughby & Partners as partners. Hugh Brett, the founder of Dallas
Brett and editor of European Intellectual Property Law Review, will become a
consultant to the firm. Two other solicitors will join – Hugh Tebay and Della
Burnside.
- LES Scotland
region secretary Dr Caroline Sincock, formerly with solicitors Maclay Murray
& Spens of Glasgow, has joined Forthright Innovation, the trading arm of Stirling
University Innovation Park, as development manager. Forthright has been established
to provide support services to small and medium sized companies involved in
new product development and technology transfer projects. Contact her at Scion
House, Stirling University Innovation Park, Stirling, FK9 4NF, tel 01786 448333,
fax 01786 458033.
- PATENT and trademark
attorneys, Wilson Gunn M’Caw (WGM) and trademark attorneys Elwyn R Roberts and
Co. have entered into association. WGM partners Barry Quest, Bill Downey and
Mark Goodwin have become partners with Elwyn ‘Robbie’ Roberts MBE and Kate Johnson
in the firm, Elwyn R Roberts. The two practices will continue separately for
the present.
- AFTER
eight years with character merchandising specialists Merlin Collections, Kelvyn
Gardner has created a new company, Topps Europe, to work in the fields of licensing,
marketing and creative services. He can be contacted on tel 01908 561588.
People
in the news
- HEALTHCARE committee
member Sharon Finch is to lead a case study workshop on negotiating and drafting
optimum licensing deals in Geneva on 11 March. This forms part of a three-day
conference on Win-win licensing deals. Brian Morgan, consultant licensing executive
with Tenabe Seiyaku and former director and vice president of scientific licensing
at SmithKline Beecham, will be chairing the three-day event. Other LES members
taking an active part will be Robert D Nolan, international product manager
with Zeneca Pharmaceuticals, Dr Peter Cozens, director of licensing at Medeva
and Ritchie Sharp, business development manager for 3M Pharmaceuticals. Dr James
C Vlazny, president of Licensing International, and Dr Hans F Mohr, former head
of pharma licensing at CIBA Pharmaceuticals, will be other active participants.
- JAMES
Francis Jones, Peter Brownlow and Professor Derek Bosworth broke new ground
for members and guests at the LES North West meeting on November 11 when, among
other subjects, they discussed disputes over domain names and the value of the
Intellectual Property Forum.
ELWYN ‘Robbie’
Roberts MBE was due to entertain members and guests at a LES North West meeting
as we went to press with the reminiscences of ‘an aged trademark agent’. As
one of the profession’s most respected trademark attorneys, he can always expect
a warm reception when indulging in light-hearted reflections on his experiences.
- MARK Anderson, a
speaker at the forthcoming joint meeting with AURIL, will be enjoying a special
Christmas present – publication by Butterworth of his new book, Drafting and
negotiating commercial contracts.
Committee
and meeting reports
EC/Laws committee chairman Nigel
Jones reports on progress on the Community Patent Green Paper.
We submitted comments on
the Commission’s Community Patent Green Paper at the end of October. The key
issues were:
- a community
Patent System must not adversely affect licensing;
- the system must be cost effective, and industry must have confidence in the
enforcement arrangements;
- the introduction of such a system must not have an adverse effect on the attitude
of the European Commission or the European Court of Justice to exhaustion of
rights; and
- the current national and EPC routes for obtaining patents must be retained.
We agreed with the Commission
that the key problems with the Community Patent Convention (as amended in 1989)
were the high translation costs and the difficulties with judicial arrangements
for enforcing the patents.
On the latter, we came
down in favour of a central European Patents Appeal Court. Others advocate such
a central court dealing with matters at first instance, but we expressed concern
about the practicalities of staffing such a court. Similar points were made
in our (separate) submission to the European Communities Committee of the House
of Lords, which had asked us for comments on slightly different aspects of the
Community Patent proposal. I was due recently to attend the public hearing in
Luxembourg to discuss the Green Paper. A report on that hearing will be made
to the committee at our meeting in mid-December, and will be covered in the
next issue of News Exchange.
Chemicals
Henry Connor and Trevor Hunter have formed the nucleus of a Chemical Industry
special interest group, and are launching a campaign to make LES activities
and membership benefits known to British industry. They would be glad of support
and to hear from LES members with an interest in this area of intellectual property.
Software and Multimedia
John Lewis, a freelance intellectual property attorney and solicitor advocate
in London, is the new chairman of the Software and Multimedia special interest
group.
University/Industry
Liaison
Tom Hockaday, intellectual property manager with the University of Bristol,
has taken over from Dr Robert Smailes as chairman of the University/Industry
Liaison Committee.
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