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After having been nodded through by U.S. Congress Committees, on August 13, 2009, Mr David Kappos was sworn in as new U.S.-PTO Director.

U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke concluded in his speech at the ceremonial swearing in at the U.S.-PTO Headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia:

A brief biographical note from the U.S.-PTO website:

Mr Lessig's discussion of Google Books (Cambridge, MA, July 31, 2009, talk at the Berkman workshop on the Google book search settlement) appears to be spot on whereas some contributions of the German Government to the debate on EU level suggest that they did not get the point (Documents 10221/09 and 9285/09).

Video clip licence:

On this Blog I repeatedly had reported on the rise of the German Piratenpartei (see especially here and there). This party causes concerns, if not headaches, for many people working in the field of Intellectual Property as one of their constitutional cornerstones appears to be a critical or even hostile attitude towards this field of law. The Swedish counterpart Piratpartiet have positioned themselves as plain patent abolitionists.

However, their German counterpart appears to be somewhat more moderate: They are demanding modifications of Copyright law plus a sectoral abolishment of patents in the fields of software and biotechnology. This does of course not mean that such sectoral abolitionism might be acceptable for anyone working with these instruments. But it should be well noted that the German branch of the Pirate movement have chosen other starting points than their Swedish counterpart.

Concerning the recent elections to the European Parliament, Piratenpartei had ended up at approximately 0.9%. On September 27, 2009, there will be general elections held in Germany, and weekly polls show how the various political parties stand in the voter's favour. Recently Handelsblatt have published a poll result as follows:

A friendly reader of this Blog recently has made me aware of a Tender 2009/S 147-214675 (OJ/S S147 on 04/08/2009) issued by the European Commission, Directorate-General for Internal Market and Services, and titled 'Study on the quality of the patent system in Europe':

"The European Commission's Directorate-General for Internal Market and Services plans to conclude a contract for a comprehensive study on patent quality. The aim is to study the quality of patent rights with economic analysis in order to propose effective policy solutions for the optimal functioning of the future patent system in Europe considering its objectives to encourage innovation and the diffusion of new technology and knowledge. This should take into account a system with the co-existence of national and European patents, and a future Community patent which is currently being negotiated between Member States."

The budget for this project has a cap at EUR 200.000, and the deadline for handing over the deliverables is set to lapse 15 months after award of the contract. Maybe that we'll hear news concerning the results in Spring 2011 or so. I do not have any particular idea as to what kind of organisation is aimed at with this Tender:

In today's issue of the German Official Gazette ('Bundesgesetzblatt Jahrgang 2009 Teil I Nr. 50, ausgegeben zu Bonn am 4. August 2009') we find the publication of an Act for Simplification and Modernisation of Patent Law ('Patentrechtsmodernisierungsgesetz'). For a review of its contents, see here. In accordance with Article 9 thereof, the Act will enter into force on

October 01, 2009.

Affected areas of law are in particular patent nullification proceedings and employee inventions. Moreover, additional fees are introduced for the eleventh and each further claim of a German patent application.

Moreover, another Act amending the German Act on registered designs ('Geschmacksmustergesetz') has also been published today. It confers the German implementation of the provisions of the Hague System (day of entry into force tbd).