Hayley Tarr, Principal of Tarr Law, shares her insight on recently filed trade mark applications. She will be presenting at the upcoming Trade Marks Law: Back to Basics webinar this Thursday, 20 October.
Has the Australian government invented a flying bus and other questions raised by a run of the mill trade mark search?
So much data can be obtained by the Australian patents, designs and trade marks databases: statistics, trends, and even glimpses into the future.
The Crown in Right of the Commonwealth of Australia c/- The Australian Electoral Commission has recently filed for a series of interesting trade mark applications including:
and
Both of these have received objections from IP Australia, raising the interesting question of conflict of interest between one branch of the executive now pitted against another branch of the executive in a stoush over whether or not these trade marks will proceed to registration.
Perhaps more interesting though, is what these trade mark applications indicate is to come. Has the Australian government invented a flying bus?!
Alas, a patent search on the Australian patent register revealed that while there is – incredibly – one invention with the title “Flying Bus”, the applicant was Jean Margaret Burgess, not the Australian government, and the application dates back to 1969.
Also, the trade mark applications are not in class 12, which is the trade mark class into which vehicles such as buses are categorised.
These trade marks are filed in classes 9, 16, 25, 28, 35 and 41.
Class 9 is the trade mark class into which software applications are categorised. Wouldn’t it be amazing if the Australian government was taking first steps towards converting our paper-based voting system into an electronic app based system? It would certainly be nice to avoid that awkward walk past the hecklers (aka party representatives) on your way in to vote. And the app could have a lot of useful information for voters to read up about the people, parties, and policies they are voting for, right at the time they are voting, all in the one app.
This is all just wishful thinking on the author’s part, but it is fun to hypothesise. What do you think the Australian government is planning to do with the robot and the flying bus?
