I definitely didn’t always agree with his views, but Jack Valenti was a fine Texan and a great shaping force in the development of US copyright law. He passed on this week, and a great bio of his life can be read in the Houston Chronicle. Here he is at the swearing in of LBJ [...]

Six senior associates are to be promoted to partner at Scottish firm Dundas & Wilson, according to the Herald. Three are based in Glasgow. They include Carina Healy, an intellectual property lawyer who leads the life sciences team. Her responsibilities include further developing Dundas’s growth in IP work in this and other key industries. The [...]

Via IP-Watch, WIPO Director Kamil Idris has misrepresented his age by 9 years. One possibility that can be drawn fromt the article is that he might have done it to appear older in order to get a position at WIPO. What is clear from the article is that he misrepresented his age, but what isn’t [...]

This interview serves as a reminder that it isn’t just having IP laws, but a structure and climate to encourage businesses to create the IP in the first place, that is important to growth. The Scotsman has an interview with Aisling Burnand of the BioIndustry Association, in which she mentions the need for government support [...]

Scottish firm Burness added a new partner — Colin Hulme — to the contentious side of its IP practice. [Herald]. From the story, Burness Chairman Philip Rodney mentions: Colin and I developed a ground-breaking database that is capable of marshalling enormous amounts of information for big commercial cases. Or at least I had the idea, [...]

Novartis is learning the benefits of sharing gene information. Via Geist. [Link]. Canadians say their law on camcording in movie theatres is good enough already. Via Geist. [Link]. Finally some relief from bad web design. Myspace is to attempt to filter videos for potential copyright infringements. Maybe this will finally prevent all of those truly [...]

The AHRC Research Centre (aka my employer) are hosting an Open Forum entitled Gowers Review of Intellectual Property: Challenges for Scotland, discussing, funnily enough, The Gowers Review of Intellectual Property. The event goes from 6-8pm on Wednesday 7th February in Lecture Theatre 175 in Old College. Gowers, in the report, asks for (possibly) statutory damages: [...]