Belated Happy New Year

Apologies for resumption of service rather late in the New Year. As well as some genuine escape from work, I've spent much of the last couple of weeks looking at the IP, competition and human rights interface from the Australian perspective with visits at CGKD at Australian National University in Canberra and IPRIA at the University of Melbourne. Both were welcoming, informative and stimulating environments, and special thanks to Peter Drahos and Kim Weatherall.

Indeed, the IP/competition interface, the IP/human rights interface, the IP/World Trade interface and questions of the appropriate relationship between IP, social policy, legislation and the courts are highly current in Australia (albeit with more of a focus on each relationship, rather than further combining fields).

The High Court decision in Sony, (see previous posts) with creative approaches in both statutory interpretation and human rights, the long running question of whether to have Bill(s) of Rights and how to interprete the Commonweath Constitution, the future fate of the IP exemptions in the Trade Practices Act and the pros and cons of activist judges are all receiving intense debate. Corporations, advisers, policymakers and activists struggle with the aftermath of the US/Australia FTA - and it was interesting to see much independent thinking as to how IP and its exceptions might fare in Australia, notwithstanding criticism of the FTA from the IP perspective. For example, there is at least a view that a broad "fair use" copyright provision might be better for users than the present more specific limited exceptions. Time will tell....

Back in the UK, (and back in time) thanks to Hector MacQueen for details of the first instance decision of an English court of 21 December, in an action by AttheRaces. It was held that there was an abuse of a dominant position by the British Horseracing Board in breach of the UK Competition Act in respect of prices of supply of pre-race data, and threats of refusal to supply. See http://goderichhtml.butterworths.co.uk/competition_lawdirect/dataitem.asp?ID=225946&tid=3 and also BAILII. Look forward to exploring the database angle in detail.

Back on the plane tomorrow, back to the snow.....but with our project meetings in March and further meetings and research planned for the year, lots to look forward to - including those eternal Blackberry and Google battles, and the question of the Community Patent.