A Florida-based company that issued misleading invoices to patent and trade mark applicants was recently found to have violated the state’s Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act.

This serves as a timely reminder that there are several organisations that issue official-looking documents to owners of recently granted (or due for renewal) patents and trade marks. The documents usually look like invoices and solicit payment for a service of no value at all.

Further information on this problem, including a list of organisations engaged in the practice, is here.

IP Australia will be closed from 25 December 2009 to 1 January 2010 (inclusive).

The Intellectual Property Office of New Zealand will be closed from 25 December 2009 to 4 January 2010 (inclusive).

Any deadlines occurring on those dates will be accepted on the next business day.

In a decision where a design registration for a mattress and base was found to be valid and infringed, the relevance of the statement of novelty included in the design registration was emphasised by the Court.

Jessup J in Chiropedic Bedding Pty Ltd v Radburg Pty Ltd [2009] FCA 1163 was asked to consider whether one should pay particular attention to the features the design applicant has identified in its statement of novelty when prior art is considered for the purposes of assessing whether the registration is novel.  His Honour noted that it would be a particularly harsh outcome if third parties could not rely on the statement of novelty as indicating the respects in which the owner of the registered design asserted that the design was novel.  His Honour held that when a Court considers the validity of a registered design, the Court’s eyes are to be open to the complete design, but should:

assess that design against the prior art with a particular emphasis upon those features that the registered owner himself, or herself, at the point of registration, considered to be novel.

IP Australia has announced that a designated Australia Post office in each state and the Northern Territory will become the lodgement centre for documents and payment of fees relating to registered IP rights and new applications.

The rolling transition will commence in September 2009 with Tasmania and conclude by August 2010.

Technicon has been unsuccessful in its appeal against the decision of Cowdry J reported here in which the trial judge found that Technicon had infringed Caroma’s registered design. The Full Court decision in Technicon Industries Pty Ltd v Caroma Industries Ltd [2009] FCAFC 76 largely affirms the reasoning at first instance and in doing so gives approval to what appears to be a new approach to the question of infringement.

The Director General of the World Intellectual Property Organization, Dr Francis Gurry, will present a public lecture at the Melbourne Law School on 3 August.

Gurry is the highest-ranking Australian official in a United Nations agency, and only the third to ever head a UN agency. He is making his first official visit to Australia since his election as Director General last year.

He will speak on the subject of “Intellectual Property, Innovation and Creativity - Future Global Directions”.

IP Australia has released a synopsis of its third biennial Customer Benchmark Survey, undertaken in 2008.

The key findings and IP Australia’s response are here.

It is interesting to note that self-filers are fairly confident that their IP rights would be held up in courts, while attorneys are much less confident. One might well conclude that communication to self-filers of the pitfalls of DIY drafting needs to be improved.

Australia has moved from the second tier to the first in the Taylor Wessing Global Intellectual Property Index.

The index provides an assessment of IP regimes across 24 key jurisdictions.

The Australian government presented it budget to parliament on Tuesday evening. It is a big-spending budget intended to cushion the impact of the global recession and to stimulate the economy.

The news for those engaged in research and development and innovation is positive, with some key funding initiatives including:

The Attorney-General has announced the proposed abolition of the Federal Magistrates Court, with Magistrates being integrated into the Federal and Family Courts.

The majority of IP matters are heard before the Federal Court, which will consist of two tiers. The first being the existing Judges who will hear appeals and more complex matters, and the second being Magistrates, who will hear shorter less-complex matters. The involvement of Magistrates in IP matters in the new structure is unclear.