The Gazette 1995

JULY 1995

GAZETTE

highlighted the enormous reduction in the volume of Irish patent applications following Ireland'is ratification of the European Patent Convention during 1992. This is due to the fact that, since ratification, Ireland can be designated for patent protection in applications filed centrally with the European Patent Office in Munich. Inventors seeking protection for their inventions in this country need no longer make application direct to the Irish Patents Office. In 1991, the last full year of operation of the 1964 Act, 4 , 5 80 applications were filed. In 1993, the first full year of operation of the new 1992 Act, that figure had dropped to 1,017 of which 533 applications were for short-term patents. A proportionate reduction was experienced in the United Kingdom following their ratification of the Eruopean Patent Convention in 1977. This has meant that a knowledge of the law, practice and procedure under the European Patent Convention and the Patent Co- operation Treaty is now of pre-eminent importance for the practitioner. It is a criticism of the latest edition of Terrell that it still concerns itself primarily with the law, practice and procedure before the UK Patents Office; though it must be saiti there is a useful summary of European practice and procedure. With the rapidly declining importance of national Patent systems it is likely that the next edition of this work will be more heavily biased towards a treatment of the law, practice and procedure before the European Patent Office and the Patent Co- operation Treaty.

spokesman for the American Realist Movement, best known for his writing on jurisprudence, commercial law, legal anthropology and legal education, as well as the architect of the Uniform Legal Code, once told a group of incoming law students: "The hardest j ob of the first year is to lop off your common sense of justice, to knock your ethics and your sense of justice into temporary anaesthesia. You are to acquire the ability to think precisely, to analyse coldly, - and to manipulate the machinery of the law. It is not easy thus to turn human beings into lawyers." (K. Llewelyn, The Bramble Bush, 1930). Whilst recognising that sometimes a sense of justice will not assist a young lawyer in understanding why a promise not supported by consideration will be unenforceable, I profoundly disagree with the generality of the sentiments expressed by Professor Llewelyn. A common sense of justice, basic common sense and a sense of ethics, should be the hall mark of a lawyer at any age. Reading through the cases in Cases of Laws of the European Communities, I am impressed with the application of the common sense of justice, hence my introduction. Professor Schermers, one of the initiators of the project has retired and has been replaced by Professor Deirdre Curtin of the Europa Institute of the University of Utrecht. Due to space restrictions, I shall only refer to the chapter headings all of which are sub-divided into sections. The headings are: Foundations of Community Law; Institutions and Powers of Delegation; Judicial Protection; The Relationship Between Community and National Law; The Four Freedoms; Competition Policy; Community Policies; and External Relations including the Common Trade Policy. The present writer regrets the omission of general introductions to each topic and references to further Leading

reading but understands that the editors must keep the book within tolerable proportions. Practitioners can aspire to gain a true insight into the implementation of European Law by reading this book; they have available to them a handy source of basic reference material.

Dr Eamonn G Hall

The Law Reform Commission Report on the Hague Convention Abolishing the Requirement of Legalisation for Foreign Public Documents

Law Reform Commission, Dublin, 1995, xiii + 133pp., Softback, £10.

This Report examines the case for Ireland becoming a party to the Hague Convention of 5th October 1961 or, to give the Convention its full title, the Hague Convention Abolishing the Requirement of Legislation for Foreign Public Documents. The Convention was adopted at the 9th Session of the Hague Conference on Private International Law in that year and although the Convention has remained open for signature by the State since then, Ireland has not seen fit, up to the present time, to ratify it. Of the existing member states which ; comprise the European Union, only Ireland and Denmark have failed to ratify the Convention. The achievement of the Convention was to simplify the procedures - usually tedious and frequently complicated - which had to be complied with in order that a foreign public document executed in one country would be accepted in and given legal effect to in another country in which it was received and intended to be acted upon. The simple formula was to substitute for legalisation a new form of certification described in the Convention as an apostille. Anyone familiar with having such a document legalised in Ireland will be aware of the chain of verificatory signatures (and seals) which must be applied to it in order to render the document effective

Martin Tierney

Leading Cases on the Laws of the Eu r opean Commun i t i es

Sixth Edition, Edited by D. Curtin, M. van Empel, E.L. Volker and J.A. Winter, Europa Institute, University of Amsterdam, Kluwer Law and Taxation, Publishers, Deventer, The Netherlands, 1994, xix + 795pp.

The late and celebrated Karl ( 1 8 83 - 1962) Columbia Law S c ho o l 's renowned professor,

Llewelyn

209