Google’s Silver Bullet for Patent Trolls
Technology companies take note: Google may have found a way to beat patent trolls, and you are invited to join them. The term “patent troll” refers to an entity which exists for the sole purpose of enforcing or licensing patent rights which were not the result of its own innovation. Although the term “patent assertion entity” is preferred by policy makers and academics, the more colourful and emotive “patent troll” has firmly entered our lexicon and has recently even appeared in a U.S. Supreme Court decision. Google, SAP, Uber and other leading technology companies have banded...
Read MoreCriminal Plants – New Plant Breeders’ Rights Bill
Editor: Among the various pillars of the intellectual property law, perhaps the most esoteric is that of plant breeders’ rights. Despite its significant scientific and economic role, this peculiar and highly specialised field is unfamiliar to most outside the field of IP law. It is therefore with pleasure that the Chair of IP Law reproduce here a post on the Plant Breeders Rights Bill of 2015, which first appeared here on the website of Spoor & Fisher. Most appropriately, this insightful review of the Bill is written by David Cochrane, author of the chapter on plant...
Read MoreA limited victory: IP and exchange control
In the culmination of a widely followed case, on 1 October 2014 the Supreme Court of Appeal ordered the South African Reserve Bank (SARB) to repay Mark Shuttleworth over R250 million plus interest. The money had been levied against Shuttleworth when he applied to transfer his assets out of the country in 2009. He had emigrated from South Africa several years before that, and the prevailing practice at the time was to levy an exit penalty of 10% on any person who emigrated and wished to transfer more than R750,000 from South Africa. This exit levy was dropped in 2010, but this was too late for...
Read MoreThe First Step
This is an editorial article contributed to the 50th year Commemorative Edition of Responsa Meridiana. “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a first step”. So said Lao-tzu, the Chinese philosopher, who lived in the fifth century BC. How true this can be of a legal career and indeed of any on-going venture. When one looks back over a career, one realises just how important the first step embarking on that career was. Often the significance of the step was not realised at the time and perhaps it was not even recognised as a first step. This only becomes apparent in...
Read MorePatents and Public Health – The New Frontier
The long-awaited South African draft National Policy on Intellectual Property (the draft IP Policy) which was published on 4 September 2013 (read the policy here) has recently led to an unfortunate furore in the press. On 17 January 2014 Money MSN published a report based on a document that was leaked from the Innovative Pharmaceutical Association South Africa (IPASA), an industry lobby group comprising the local subsidiaries of innovator pharmaceutical companies. The document is a plan for a campaign prepared by U.S.-based consultancy Public Affairs Engagement, to delay and modify the...
Read MoreFormula For Plain (Bland) Packaging
As of 6 December this year you will no longer see a nurturing mother feeding her happy baby a bottle of formula milk as an advertisement in any newspaper, magazine, on a website or on television. In fact, you will not see the names of any brand or logos of infant formula, follow-up formula or powdered milks, or feeding bottles, teats and feeding cups for infants being promoted anywhere. Well, you will still see the names on the products as you are standing in front of the shelf in the supermarket and wondering which product is the best option for your little angel. You will have to try and...
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