A summer message

Home, sweet home for JIPLP

At this week's JIPLP team meeting in Oxford, I was delighted to discover that the journal is maintaining its upward movement in market conditions which continue to vex most publishers, and indeed most journals. So far this year JIPLP has seen a more than gratifying 6% increase in its institutional subscriber base; production targets continue to be met; reader and contributor satisfaction levels run high and the pipeline continues to flow with high-quality articles and current intelligence notes.  

But JIPLP is meant to be more than just a journal.  Parallel to its formal website, leading to its archives and information for contributors, subscribers and readers, the jiplp weblog reaches out to a large and growing segment of the IP community, with over 800 subscribers and nearly half a million page views to date. To this we have added a Twitter account, which now has over 340 followers. Through this we have publicised articles and blogposts, sought authors on specialised topics and -- perhaps most entertainingly for those who are not authors -- pinpointed egregious errors and bad writing style in the pieces submitted to us.

The JIPLP community continues to seek new ways of making friends, reaching readers and sharing ideas.  Earlier this year we held two highly successful joint events with our German partners at GRUR Int and, for January 2014, we are plotting a London seminar in which we contrast the common law of passing off with the civil law concept of unfair competition, to examine how each works in practice and see what each body of law can learn from the other.  Details will be circulated once available.

In the meantime, we thank our readers, authors and critics for their various contributions to our venture and hope that, your continued input and support, we will be able to bring a better understanding of IP law and practice to the community we serve.

Miscellaneous matters

"Metaphors, law and digital phenomena: the Swedish pirate bay court case" is the title of a piece by Stefan Larsson PhD, LLM, aresearcher in Sociology of Law, Lund University, Sweden.  It's published in one of JIPLP's sister journals, the International Journal of Law and Information Technology (IJLIT), which you can learn all about here. According to the abstract:

"This article uses conceptual metaphor theory to develop the concept of ‘skeumorphs’ (reuse of old concepts for new phenomena) in order to analyse the Swedish The Pirate Bay court case. In line with conceptual metaphor theory, which states that abstract thinking is largely metaphorical, the article argues that this is true also for digital phenomena that, thus, are largely understood through metaphors and skeumorphs. Also, when attempting to understand and conceptualize new digital phenomena such as The Pirate Bay (TPB), law in a digital society is inevitably affected. Hence, new phenomena can be fought over in a ‘battle of metaphors’, in the TPB court case, for example, evidenced by the arguments of seeing TPB as ‘a platform’, ‘bulletin board’, or an ‘impure search engine’. This, here argued, was of key relevance for the outcome of the case".

Readers will appreciate that this is an imaginatively academic approach to the Swedish Pirate Bay litigation.  JIPLP itself welcomes more practical pieces in the happy knowledge that anyone who wants to write or read about skeumorphs has only to turn to IJLIT in order to do so.

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Here's a little reminder about submitting pieces for publication:

• * If you've not yet seen a copy of JIPLP, ask to inspect a sample issue so you can see what the articles and current intelligence notes look like before you do so.  If you wouldn't turn up at a party or an important meeting without checking what you should be wearing, so why should you think of submitting an article for publication without troubling to see what it should look like?
  
  
• * It's always best to check with JIPLP before writing a piece, in case we have already accepted an article on the same subject. You can easily do so by emailing our Commissioning Editor, Sarah Harris, at sarah.harris@oup.com and asking her.
  
  
• * Like many other journals, JIPLP has been using an online submission called Manuscript Central and has done so for some years. Please use it! If you submit anything for publication by emailing it to any member of the JIPLP team, this will only slow the publication process down since whoever receives your email and attachment will have to email you back to ask you to submit it online. Manuscript Central is not there to vex, annoy and inconvenience authors -- it is actually there for their benefit and protection, since it ensures that no article is ever "lost in the system" and that all  members of the editorial and production team can gain access to it with equal facility.

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Here's another reminder: JIPLP has a highly productive relationship with leading German IP periodical GRUR Int., which you can read all about here.  One of the benefits for JIPLP contributors is that, each month, two pieces from JIPLP (usually one article and one current intelligence note) are selected for publication in GRUR Int. too, thus giving the author a large and well-informed readership beyond that of JIPLP itself.

Some bits and pieces

First, a quick reminder for subscribers to the printed version of JIPLP: the June 2012 issue (contents here) has already been dispatched and should be with you by now, all things being equal.

Secondly, if you are submitting material for publication in JIPLP, can I strongly encourage you to take a look at least one recent issue before doing so, and to consult the Contributor Guidelines. It will save someone a lot of work at a later stage -- and that someone may well be you!  In particular

• JIPLP notes on cases, statutes and other recent development, which we call Current Intelligence notes, must be submitted in accordance with the template which has been in use since the journal was launched in 2005.  We regret that this template is so widely unpopular with authors -- but it is extremely popular with readers. If you want to please yourself rather than your readers, there are other journals out there which may be delighted to publish it, but we put our readers' interests first since we exist for them, not vice versa.
  
• Footnotes are for references, not for cut-and-pasted extracts from your own or someone else's research. Also, they really do belong at the foot of the page. JIPLP doesn't do bibliographical lists of references at the end of each article. What's more, since footnotes are for specific guidance of readers, if you're citing a book -- particularly if it's a multi-volume work -- please let us know which volume you are referring to and which page or paragraph.
  
• Each article has a title and is likely to contain headings, sometimes subheadings and very rarely anything of a lower order than that.  We do not number paragraphs and their subdivisions, so references such as "see paragraph 3.4.ix(b).IV above" and suchlike have no place in a JIPLP article.
  
• Before you garnish your submitted piece with italicised quotes, underlined headings, italicised bold Gothic text and so on, bear in mind that someone has to take them all out again before the piece goes for setting.  This takes time and effort and has to be paid for. 

Thanks so much for your cooperation!

Bits and pieces

By now, all subscribers to the print edition of the November 2011 issue of JIPLP should have received their copies. If you've not yet received yours, you can check the contents here and see what you're still missing. Incidentally, some 20 items are available on JILP's Advance Access service while they await their paper publication dates.


Some of our editorial board members have been on the move.  Newly-appointed Andrew P. Bridges is now with Fenwick & West, San Francisco, California (you can email him here), while Neil J. Wilkof, who has been on the editorial board since the journal's inception, is now of counsel to Dr Eyal Bressler & Co., Ramat Gan, Israel (you can email him here).


Notice to all prospective authors: please, please, PLEASE -- when submitting articles for publication, do try to bear in mind the fact that JIPLP has a house style. While we try to be as flexible as possible and want to help our authors gain the publication of their submissions, we have to bear in mind the interests of our readers too.  In particular:

• While authors rejoice in the publication of longer articles, most readers prefer shorter ones. If your subject matter is too long for an article 7,500 words or thereabouts, ask whether you actually have two separate articles on your hands.
• JILP's footnotes should appear at the bottom of each page, not at the end of the article. They should refer to sources cited in an article and should not be bibliographic exercises in scooping up all the articles you've found on Google.
• If you are writing on a topic which is tangential to IP but nonetheless of importance to it, spell out its relevance to JIPLP readers. Any article which contains no mention of the words "intellectual property" or of any specific IP right will be rejected since it is unfair to expect subscribers to a quality specialist journal to read through an apparently irrelevant piece in order to work out why it should be of interest or importance to them.
• There has in recent months been a disconcerting trend towards the inflation of credits. Whereas formerly an author might acknowledge support from a research assistant, a colleague, a professor or a funding body, the credits are starting to read like Oscar acceptances. If this continues, I shall consider the launch of a fresh website on which authors can gratefully praise their partners, their pets, their cars and anything else that occurs to them. These items would link back to the original JIPLP article, in the event that the reader was curious enough to want to read it.

JIPLP: some changes for 2012

The Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice will be introducing some changes in the coming year. In particular,

• Printed annual index. In the past, JIPLP has produced, and posted to subscribers of its paper version, an annual index for binding together with the monthly issues for each year. It is now apparent that, since most people -- including non-subscribers -- now search the content of JIPLP online via the "Search this journal" box on the journal's home page, there is little to be gained from persisting with the printed annual index and it will no longer be produced.
  
  
• JIPLP Express.  A feature of JIPLP since its inception, JIPLP Express was designed as a convenient means by which readers could read in brief the contents of each issue; it was particularly handy when printed copies of the journal were circulated manually among members of the same company or law firm, since the swift identification of content increased the speed of circulation. However, this feature is now little-used and will be phased out at the end of the year.
  
  
• Current Intelligence. The Current Intelligence section of JIPLP, dealing with recent legal decisions, legislation and current developments, is very popular among readers and will now be expanded. Please feel free to contact JIPLP's Content Commissioning Editor Sarah Harris if you would like to write a Current Intelligence note on a recent case or issue which is of particular interest to you.  Guidelines for authors regarding Current Intelligence notes and articles can be found here.
  
  
• Guest Editorials. While Jeremy Phillips will continue to write the majority of the editorials, several members of the Editorial Board have indicated their willingness to contribute editorials too -- so be prepared for a bit more variety and a broader expression of opinions.

Bits and pieces

JIPLP has just welcomed a new team member -- Danielle Northcott, who joins us as a Publishing Assistant. Danielle has two pieces of fresh news for subscribers:

1. A new QuickSearch widget is going to be provided at the top of column three on the contents page (which currently looks like this). This widget will enable users quickly to enter a search rather than having to click through to the "Search this journal" facility on the journal's homepage (here) [there's no truth in the rumour that this is to renamed SlowSearch -- it's still pretty nippy!]. The QuickSearch widget is a usability improvement which will make it significantly easier for users to run a search on the site. At present, approximately 5% of users perform a search; Oxford University Press will be monitoring the impact of the QuickSearch widget in terms of increased search usage. This change will be automatically implemented on 1 September.
   
2. A "Most Read and Most Cited" widget will be added to the bottom of column three of JIPLP's content pages. This, as its name suggests, will afford users quick access to the most read and most cited articles. This innovation will also be automatically implemented on 1 September.

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Here are some more articles in search of authors.  If you'd like to write on one of these topics, email Content Commissioning Editor Sarah Harris at sarah.harris@oup.com and let her know.  Guidance for authors can be found on the JIPLP website here.

• "Fluid trade marks": what are they and how best can they be protected?
• How can internet service providers fashion a simple, effective and user-friendly intellectual property policy?
• A summary of the current position regarding evidence of genuine use of an earlier trade mark in European law
• Injunctive relief for patent infringement in the Unitef States post-eBay v MercEchange: how much has changed?
• Disposing of databases: due diligence and other practical issues.

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Here are some writing errors that I've been having to deal with quite a lot recently.  Do please try to avoid them: they're usually easy to spot if you re-read your articles and Current Intelligence notes before you submit them:

1. Slipping between the past and the present tense: please do this only if you are contrasting things that happened in the past with things that are still happening. Also, descriptions of the facts of cases should not be written in the historical present.  It is odd to read "The plaintiff is the owner of the BINGO trade mark, under which it manufactures and markets widgets" when the trade mark was cancelled in 2005 and the plaintiff ceased trading in 2007.

2. Inconsistency between singular and plural.  This problem particularly plagues nouns that have a collective element to their meaning, for example, 'company', 'committee', 'government', 'collecting society".  It is not uncommon to receive sentences that run like this:

"The company were seeking to register as a Community trade mark the sign which it was using on both domestically-manufactured products they were making and those it imported from a manufacturer outside the European Union".

3. Do please remember that not every reader is on the writer's wavelength.  I recently received a submission for publication of a Current Intelligence note on a court concerning the validity of a patent which didn't actually contain the word "patent" anywhere: the writer assumed that the reader would know. While the assumption was probably quite correct in this case, a little assistance from the author is often welcome since validity is an issue that affects other rights as well.  Equally, it helps to let the reader know which jurisdiction you're writing about (British authors are generally the worst offenders on this point!)

Bits and pieces -- and some ideas for articles

The August 2011 issue

The print version of the August 2011 issue of the Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice (JIPLP) has been dispatched and is arriving as I write. You can check the contents of this issue here. If you've not received your copy in the next day or so, blame the post!

The online version of this issue has been available to subscribers since Friday 8 July (you can read the Editorial here even if you're not a subscriber) and its contents would have been placed online some weeks earlier than that under JIPLP's Advance Access service -- which online subscribers can enjoy as part of their subscription package, while non-subscribers can gain access on a pay-to-read basis.

Articles in the journal

JIPLP commissions most of its content and also receives a number of unsolicited features.  Whether you are commissioned to write a piece, want to be commissioned or have just written something and are planning to submit speculatively, the person you should be dealing with at first instance is Sarah Harris, who is the Content Commissioning Editor: you can email her here.  It is really important to channel questions, ideas and offers to write through Sarah, since she maintains a database of articles submitted, promised or hoped-for  and can tell you whether the contribution you want to make has already been duplicated.

If you are looking to write something and are unsure what to write about, any of the following are worth thinking about:

• Anything to do with client privilege and disclosure/discovery of documents in IP proceedings;
• Strategic and legal issues involving utility model/petty patent protection;
• Anything on the assessment of compensatory damages and the recovery of an infringer's profits, particularly on how estimates of recovery affect a decision to sue;
• Civil actions to protect confidential information, both commercial and personal, against cyber-attacks and phone hacking;
• Whether the Cloud has any significant impact on the legal regime relating to IP on the internet.

Further topics will be suggested soonb. In the meantime, if any of these topics appeals to you, irrespective of jurisdiction, please contact Sarah Harris at first instance.

Odds and ends

Here's a bit of news about some of our team.  JIPLP Editorial Board founder-member Timothy Pinto has just been promoted to Special Counsel and Head of the Publishing Group at Taylor Wessing.  We are also remiss in failing to mention earlier that Tim's Editorial Board colleague Birgit Clark has moved from Boult Wade Tennant to a new position at Berwin Leighton Paisner.  We wish them both the very best!


The printed version June 2011 issue of JIPLP was posted a while ago and should be with you by now.  Don't forget -- the safest, easiest, speediest and indeed cheapest way to benefit from a subscription to JIPLP is to sign up for the electronic version.

Editing: it can be a nightmare
if contributors don't help!

Now for a quick word from me as editor.  I do my best to keep JIPLP bubbling with lively, interesting and well-written content wherever possible, and I put a lot of effort into my role.  There are however some things I can't do.  These things include, and are therefore not limited to, the following:

• Giving authors and readers permission to reproduce articles, current intelligence notes and other features, whether in whole or part, however nicely they ask.  OUP is the exclusive licensee, and I have no permission that I can give;
• Giving authors permission to use third party material;
• Filling in the gaps and missing references which an author has neglected or been unable to identify;
• Verifying the functionality of internet addresses;
• Reading and giving an opinion on first, second and third drafts of articles before they've even been submitted;
• Telling contributors which issue their contributions will be published in, until such time as the production team has had a chance to meet and organise the material before it -- this rarely takes place within two hours of an article being submitted for publication;
• Advising contributors of the likelihood that any journal other than JIPLP will be able and willing to publish their work.

If you bear this in mind and make life easier for me, I'll do my best to make life sweet for you!

Bits and pieces

Here comes the May issue ...

The printed version of the May 2011 issue of JIPLP was dispatched last week and subscribers should be receiving their copies imminently if they have not already done so. Don't forget -- the "real" subscription to JIPLP is to the online version, which appears several weeks ahead of the print version and which has a conveniently searchable archive and lots of other attractions.

Earlier experiments
in delivering JIPLP
by phone were bound
to fail.

On the subject of other attractions, we've already mentioned that JIPLP will soon be available in a mobile-enabled format. But there's more to come. Later this month JIPLP will be trialling a new cross-linking software which will, if I've understood the proposition correctly, discreetly draw the reader's attention to other JPLP articles, current intelligence notes and material which the reader might not know about. This can save time, effort and stress by, for example, alerting a reader to the existence of another article which discusses the same topic while reaching a different conclusion, or which reveals the existence of a later piece that updates the content of an earlier one. More details will be provided in due course.

The May 2012 issue of JIPLP (the "INTA Special", since extra copies are distributed at the annual International Trademark Meeting) will carry a special focus on the protection and exploitation of geographical indications. This is very much a hot topic, not just in terms of whether trade mark protection or sui generis regulation is the best approach but also in terms of developing countries reclaiming terms that have become generic or descriptive in other markets and with regard to the current proliferation of bilateral and plurilateral treaties that impose requirements for their protection.  If you have a specific interest or expertise in this area and would like to suggest a specific topic which like to see covered or would like to volunteer to write on such a topic, it would be helpful to know as early as possible.  To express an interest, please email me here with the subject line "JIPLP GI issue".  Note, though: JIPLP only wishes to receive submissions from authors with some particular insight which they can add to the knowledge of the journal's readership.  Please do not offer student dissertations and essays which do no more than summarise existing law and policy, drawing on well-known materials and secondary sources.

Bits and pieces

DOI. Some readers have asked why contributions published in JIPLP -- and indeed other journals -- are often accompanied by a mysterious little piece of coding which contains the letters "doi". The answer simple. The "doi" is each published featured Digital Object Identifier.  In short,

The Digital Object Identifier (DOI^®) System is for identifying content objects in the digital environment. DOI^® names are assigned to any entity for use on digital networks. They are used to provide current information, including where they (or information about them) can be found on the Internet. Information about a digital object may change over time, including where to find it, but its DOI name will not change.

The DOI System provides a framework for persistent identification, managing intellectual content, managing metadata, linking customers with content suppliers, facilitating electronic commerce, and enabling automated management of media. DOI names can be used for any form of management of any data, whether commercial or non-commercial. The DOI System is an ISO International Standard.

The system is managed by the International DOI Foundation, an open membership consortium including both commercial and non-commercial partners. Over 48 million DOI names have been assigned by DOI SystemRegistration Agencies in the US, Australasia, and Europe.

Using DOI names as identifiers makes managing intellectual property in a networked environment much easier and more convenient, and allows the construction of automated services and transactions.

To learn more about DOI names, see the Overviews, and begin with the Introductory Overview and Introductory Slide Presentation. The Factsheets, including the most recent, "Managing Data Relationships Using DOI Resolution" and "DOI System and Standard Identifier Schemes" discuss key topics about the system. For the most complete description of all aspects of DOI System technology and policy, consult the DOI^® Handbook.

Lots more information can be gleaned about the background and functionality of the doi from the website of the International DOI Foundation here.


On the way, or already there.  Subscribers to the hard copy version of JIPLP should note that the April issue was dispatched a few days ago and you should be receiving yours imminently if you have not already done so.


Not mere pedantry.  Contributors are kindly requested to make sure that diacritic marks ("accents") are incorporated into the texts of their submissions.  This is because peer reviewers and members of the editorial and production teams -- who may not have access to your source materials -- may not know that you have left an accent out. This might sound trivial, but some important databases -- the Curia database of decisions of the Court of Justice of the European Union being but one -- are very sensitive to the presence of absence of diacritic signs, and search engine results will also differ (thus searches for 'L’Oréal' and 'L'Oreal') will produce some overlapping hits but also many different ones).

Miscellany

1. Readers have voted by a handsome majority to retain "ECJ" as the preferred abbreviation of the highest court in the Court of Justice of the European Union and, with immediate effect, the editorial team at JIPLP will use this abbreviation when editing articles and Current Intelligence notes. There are still some items in the pipeline in which "CJEU" has been used, but once they have passed through the system JIPLP will be consistent in its use of ECJ. For the record, 69% of respondents opted for ECJ, while just 25% favoured CJEU. We'd be grateful if contributors of future copy would please bear this in mind when submitting material for publication.

2. Subscribers to the January 2011 hard-copy version of JIPLP should all by now have received their copies. If you're not sure whether the most recent copy received is the current one, check the colour: if it's a silvery grey, it's last year's; if it's purple, it's this year's.

3. "Traditional knowledge products in Latin America and their misappropriation", by Marcelo A.G. Bardi, Evelyn Gutiérrez-Oppe and Rodolfo Politano, was published in Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice (2011) 6(1). This article originally included a reference to K. W. Tupper, "Ayahuasca healing beyond the Amazon: the globalization of a traditional indigenous entheogenic practice" (2009) GN 9, 117-136. This citation was however lost in the publishing process. We apologise for this omission.

Bits and pieces

1.  Subscribers to the hard copy version of the Journal of Intellectual Property Law and Practice should note that the December 2010 issue has now been dispatched and that they should be receiving it soon, if they have not already done so. This is the last issue to bear the 2010 silver-grey colour, since the 2011 issues will bear a strikingly different hue (this is not merely a matter of aesthetics -- it helps subscribers tell at a glance whether the issue before them is from the current year or is of some antiquity).


Note: the December 2010 issue has been available online to subscribers since 8 November (see post here) and much of its content was available even before that date via JIPLP's Advance Access service.

2,  JIPLP is seeking articles on the following three subjects:

Holy union or IP opportunity?

* Conflict of interest in contentious and non-contentious IP matters: how can law firms best approach them?

* The impending British Royal Wedding: an appraisal of the IP issues.

* Collection of damages and/or profits by the successful IP litigant: risks and their management.

If you are interested in submitting an article on one of these topics, please email me here and let me know.