Lighter Side
Luck versus skill: The dicey history of board game IP
As the year’s biggest sales period for board games gets underway, Matt Packer explains how these colourful entertainments conceal decades of tinkering, toil and timely IP manoeuvres...  »
IP’s odyssey to the Clarke side
Sir Arthur C Clarke predicted many things – but could he have foreseen that his work would one day be roped into an IP dispute? Matt Packer looks at the innovations of a legendary ideas man...  »
There’s something awfully familiar about this place…
Fake handbags, garments and perfumes are so last week. Matt Packer reports that counterfeiters in China have something altogether bigger in mind: entire locations...  »
What an estate to be in: is the reach of literary executors exceeding their grasp?
Inspiration drawn from the works of deceased authors can often spill into infringement. But are literary estates losing sight of where the line is drawn? Matt Packer thumbs through two recent cases...  »
Charlie Sheen in winning mood with laundry list of trademark applications
Film and TV wildman launches comprehensive branding campaign for smorgasbord of recent catchphrases...  »
Going walkabout with Paul Hogan’s reputation
Paul Hogan is suing Australia’s tax authorities for loss of earnings and defamation of character after a failed five-year probe into tax evasion. But, whatever the outcome in Hogan’s case, it’s ....  »
EPO working with Google to reduce the cost in translation
Can patent translations generated by a computer program rival those of a trained linguist? Google and the European Patent Office think so, as Richard Brass reports....  »
Not enough hours in the day for US lawyer
The billable hour has run out of control for one Ohio practitioner, whose excessive charges have bought a suspension...  »
Growing pains
The European Patent Office is due to rule later this year on the patentability of vegetable breeding techniques. Richard Brass investigates what has got environmentalists into such a stew about brocco....  »
Patents that changed the world: Lego
What does a company that manufactures readily duplicable products do when its patents expire? In the case of the Lego Group, the Danish makers of the play bricks that gave millions of us our first (....  »