Justice French - Making your own fun in intellectual property law

Making your own fun in intellectual property law - Justice Robert French provides an entertaining light-hearted look at intellectual property law and its lawyers. Justice French also reveals a few things he learnt as a judge and a practitioner acting for Wray and Associates.

“Last year I presided on a Full Court appeal about the Viagra patent. I was looking forward to an exploration of the ecstasy and mystery of human love. Instead we found ourselves with Pfizer and Eli Lilly on a quest for a “workable erection”. We were accompanied by a host of imaginary but unimaginative PhD graduates. They were keen to show us that, having read about strips of penile tissue relaxing in an organ bath of sildenafil, they knew how to make Viagra without even thinking about it. Not surprisingly, their arguments didn’t get up.”

“Take the Millenium Bug … I am not speaking here of the fin de siecle numerical glitch that was going to spell the end of civilisation as we knew it. No, I am talking about a lolly and its shape which I described in the relevant judgment as ‘… a confectionary of fruit flavoured gelatinous composition. It comprises a central body which resembles a section of a sphere with a curved upper surface and a flat lower surface. There are two oval eyes on the body and three short stylised ‘legs’ on either side of the body symmetrically disposed about the eyes’ It shape as a trade mark was the issue. Was this humble geometrical section “inherently distinctive? And the really big question - was its shape part of the ‘common heritage of mankind”? What a question. In the Full Court of the Federal Court we chewed on it metaphorically speaking.”

Justice French also urged collaboration to “ensure that in Western Australia both the practitioners and the Court can offer a service of national and international excellence”.

December 2006 edition of Intellectual Property Forum


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