One of the things I love about law, and about IP law
In lieu of a real-life Christmas present, I thought I would share with you my go-to happy thoughts about the practice of IP. If you’ve had a long year of billable hour pressures, admin, and office politics, maybe some of these thoughts will resonate enough to reignite a spark. YOU GET TO LEARN NEW THINGS Each new file is a whole new world to dive into and discover. Even the most humdrum...
To my horror, I seem to have spent quite a lot of time recently reading about and thinking about the philosophy of IP law. A year ago, I would have rolled my eyes and edged away from anyone who said something at once so pompous and so dull. At heart, I am a realist, a pragmatist. I’m primarily interested in knowing things that will help my clients win. Until recently, I took a ruthlessly...
As a junior lawyer I sat in on many speakerphone calls between law firm partners and their clients. During one such call I was shocked when the partner rubbed his temples and muttered, audibly enough for the client to hear, “Just get to the f***ing point”. At the time I hadn’t given much thought about what it meant to listen well, but I knew that wasn’t it. The more I have...
Letters before action have an unfortunate tendency to be overblown, overstated, and over-egged. The demands made can be entertainingly over the top. A while ago I was instructed in relation to a matter where my client had received some particular doozies that had been dashed off without any real analysis. The alleged causes of action were many and various, but oddly the one that really stood out...
I was taken aback to read a submission advanced by Pharmazen in Pharmazen Ltd v Anagenix IP Ltd [2020] NZCA 3016, namely that actual market use and conditions should be relevant to the assessment of confusion and deception under s 25(1)(b) of the Trade Marks Act 2002 as well as to the assessment of confusion and deception under s 17(1)(a) . Such a bold submission! And what would the consequences...
On this day in 1993 – probably about the time when I was starting to get my head around moving away from my tiny, sleepy little home town to go to law school – Dame Silvia Cartwright was being sworn in as New Zealand’s first ever female High Court judge. First ever. It is hard to believe that so shocking a milestone was achieved so recently. I’ve written previously about...
I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall of the Parliamentary Counsel Office when the drafting of s 14 of the Patents Act 2013 was discussed. As you may recall, s 14 provides that an invention is a patentable invention if, amongst other things, it is a manner of manufacture within the meaning of s 6 of the Statute of Monopolies 1623. Yep, 1623. From the time of King James I. And this is...
If I ever had the misfortune to be an after-dinner speaker for a group of lawyers (or patent attorneys for that matter), I would begin by plagiarising this statement: “Lawyers are a tough crowd. There might be more intimidating professionals – snipers, bar bouncers – but they didn’t want to hear from me.”(J Shapiro, Lawyers, Liars and the Art of Storytelling) Lawyers...
I can’t deny it – I am a terrible magpie. I want to learn about everything that is new and shiny and sparklingly original. It was because of this tendency that I spent quite a large chunk of last year learning about human genome editing. And what I discovered is that – as many of you will no doubt know already – this technology really is more than just a sparkling new toy...
I wrote this piece a long time ago, before the world changed. I wondered about swapping it for something corona-ish, especially as there are some fascinating things going on in the patent world in that area right now. For example, there is talk of both patent rights being “undermined” by State march-in rights under existing legislation, and patent rights being increased under proposed...
