Intellectual property everywhere….

Let me let you in on a secret: when there is no obvious topic for my weekly blog, I scour the Web. I am in particular a fan of Google News, which, unlike other news sites, operates without human intervention. Its bias is due solely to its search algorithm (which is proprietary and protected by a trade secret). Thus its use, filtered only by chronology, gives sometimes unforeseen results.

This week, Google News highlighted a number of items of interest: another case of generic drugs in India, a visit of Indian businessmen to China to participate in the Global IP summit, analyses of continuing and new lawsuits in semiconductors and software (last week Nokia sued Qualcomm, and Oracle attacked SAP).

But there were other, less evident, less mainstream nuggets of information:

• A specialised buy-out firm purchases a furniture company, Jeffco. The purchase  comprises “the assets, real estate and intellectual property of Jeffco Furniture”. The distinction between assets, presumably physical, and intellectual property highlights the importance of brand and design in this supposedly traditional business. 
  
  
• Israel’s Education Ministry instituted intellectual property rights education in some 600, or 20 per cent, of its secondary schools.
  
  
• A Maltese TV reality show is sued by holders of the rights to the “Big Brother” format, Endemol BV, for an alleged breach of its intellectual property
  
  
• The Latter Day Saints church (LDS) in Salt Lake City, Utah, asks a local coffee shop to quit using the statue of Angel Moroni, part of the LDS statuary, in its tongue-in-cheek promotions. According to LDS, the coffee shop infringes its IP trademark.
  
  
• Local press publishers of community calendars in the US consider the announcements supplied by community groups as the intellectual property of the publishers
  
  
• Heavy metal band WHITE LINE FEVER changes its name to SPYDERZ, in order to avoid any intellectual property lawsuits. The new name is trademarked.
  
  
• Jim Thorpe, the now retired Australian swimmer, owes his success to a stroke developed by an American coach Milt Nemens. Nemens protects the stroke and his other methods by intellectual property. I wonder whether he filed a business method patent. In any case, he is affiliated with a specialised sport swimming science firm, Parametrix Research.

These news items cover various sectors and activities, dispersed across the globe. Taken together they make a very simple point: intellectual property is not limited to high tech industries in advanced economies, but has become a global mainstream phenomenon.