Winner: Tyrone Berger

Thomson Reuters and the General Editor of the Australian Intellectual Property Journal, Associate Professor David Brennan, are pleased to announce that Tyrone Berger is the winner of the inaugural intellectual property law essay competition, run in conjunction with the Journal. Tyrone is a PhD candidate in the Faculty of Law at Monash  University. Tyrone’s thesis examines the governance of intellectual property rights, standards and competition policy in the emerging Australian Electric Vehicle (EV) industry.

In Tyrone’s paper, “Trade Mark Dilution in Australia Revisited: How Far Have We Come?”, he discusses whether or not an anti-dilution provision exists in the Trade Marks Act 1995 (Cth), and whether such a provision is desirable. Trade mark dilution occurs when distinctive trade marks are likely to be harmed by third party use even in the absence of confusion.

Tyrone’s essay was unanimously judged to be the leading essay submission. The judging panel, consisting of the Honourable Mr Justice Gummow AC, Ann Dufty (founding Editor of the Australian Intellectual Property Journal) and Associate Professor David Lindsay (Monash University), found it to be well-written, thoroughly researched and particularly interesting in that it addressed an important unresolved issue in Australian trade mark law.

Runner up: Bob Vangenne

Thomson Reuters and the General Editor would also like to congratulate the runner-up, Robert (Bob) Vangenne. Bob is Canadian and studied at Bond University, graduating in August 2011. Bob specialised in IT/IP and ecommerce law and is fascinated with web based marketing in general but specifically the developing integration of gaming theory with social media as a commercial marketing tool.

Bob’s article investigates the new expansion in domain names coming under the new generic top level domain name (gTLD) system.  The article reviews the process in acquiring a gTLD and searches to understand the business model that will benefit under the new system.

 

 

Both the winning and runner-up articles will be published in the first Part of 2012 in the Australian Intellectual Property Journal.  The Journal examines intellectual property law issues and developments within Australia and around the globe.