HOT TOPICS IN INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY LAW Robert Miller

HOT TOPICS IN INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY LAW Robert Miller Principal, Electrical Team Spruson & Ferguson 1 September 2003

Hot Topics in Intellectual Property Law ¨ Intellectual property law and competition law ¨ Technical standards and patents ¨ Harmonisation and patent law – Substantive Patent Law Treaty ¨ Copyright – parallel importation ¨ Copyright – circumvention devices – the Play. Station case ¨ The UNIX/AIX/Linux battle! 2

Basic Principle I: IP laws are good 3

Basic Principle II: Competition is good 4

Intellectual property versus competition law 5

Proposition: Competition law must not stand in the way of IP rights 6

IP rights are exploited by: ¨ ¨ Enforcement and/or Licensing 7

Comparison ¨ ¨ EP: European Treaty, Articles 81(1) and (3) US: Sherman Act Japan: Antimonopoly Law 1947 – Article 21 Australia: Trade Practices Act – section 51(3) 8

Japan Trademark flooding case 9

Japan Software (copyright licences) 10

Japan Patent pool by Pachinko machine manufacturers 11

European Community VCR (1987) 12

European Community APS (1993) 13

European Community MPEG-2 pool and MPEG-LA+5 pool 3 G Mobile Equipment 14

United States VISX/Summit ¨ Technology for performing laser eye surgery 15

United States Dell – VL-bus 16

Technical standards & patents Technical standards that coexist with patents without restriction: NONE 17

Technical standards & patents Technical standards bodies that have looser arrangements regarding patents: 18

Technical standards & patents Technical standards bodies that co-exist with patents with licensing obligations (as a minimum): 19

Technical standards & patents Technical standards bodies that are anti-patent: 20

Harmonisation of patent law Challenges: ¨ Delays in search and examination ¨ Building a Patent Office from scratch 21

Harmonisation of patent law Substantive Patent Law Treaty ¨ ¨ ¨ How to assess technical character How to access novelty How to assess inventive step How to assess unity of invention Date of invention (US)/grace period vs priority date (rest of world) 22

Copyright: Parallel importation The principle: Genuine goods sold in another country by, or with the permission of the IP rights owner 23

Copyright: Parallel importation Australia: Parallel importation is permissible in terms of: ¨ Sound recording (1998) ¨ Labeling (2000) ¨ Software (2003) ¨ Books (2003) ¨ Periodicals (2003) ¨ Sheet music in electronic form (2003) 24

Copyright: Parallel importation United States: ¨ Strongly against parallel importation European Community: ¨ Heading towards “Community exhaustion” regime 25

Copyright: Circumvention devices The Playstation case 26

The UNIX/ LINUX/ AIX battle! 27

LINUX USERS DISTRIBUTORS LINUX (e. g. RED HAT) Asks for license fee of US$1399 per processor Seeks declatory judgment of non-infringement of copyright Open source code Sues for breach of trade secret & contract US$3 billion SCO (UNIX copyright and patents) Sues for copyright infringement Sues for patent infringement IBM (AIX) Purports to terminate UNIX license 28

Robert Miller Principal, Electrical Patents Group Phone: Email: + 61 2 9207 0738 robert. miller@sprusons. com. au 29