New Research Guides from GlobaLex

The GlobaLex collection at the New York University School of Law has just published a few new research guides:

• International Trademark Law – The Madrid System: "Registration of trademarks in multiple jurisdictions around the world is governed by two independent treaties – the Madrid Agreement (the Agreement) and the Madrid Protocol (the Protocol). Despite its name, the Protocol is a separate treaty and not a 'protocol' to the Agreement. Together, the Agreement and the Protocol are known as the Madrid System for the International Registration of Marks (the Madrid System). States party to the Agreement and/or the Protocol and organizations party to the Protocol are referred to collectively as Contracting Parties. Together, they constitute the Madrid Union, which is a Special Union under Article 19 of the Paris Convention. The Madrid System is a centrally administered system (by the International Bureau of the World Intellectual Property Organization, WIPO) for obtaining a bundle of trademark registrations in separate jurisdictions, creating in effect a basis for an 'international registration' of marks. This guide is intended to highlight the resources and important issues encountered in using the Madrid System for the international registration of marks."
• Selected U.N. Resources and Research Tools: Overview and Search Tips for Legal Research: "The resources described here are currently the most important finding tools for United Nations documents. Our aim is to help legal researchers select the tool best suited to their needs. The side-by-side column format was thought advantageous for purposes of an overview: a good way to organize the information and see the tools in relation to one another. The last (and longest) section offers search tips for each resource or finding aid."

There are also 2 updates to existing guides:

• History, Role, and Activities of the Council of Europe: Facts, Figures and Information Sources: "The main aim of this article is to assist the reader seeking information about the Council of Europe and to provide sources of information (bibliographic sources, web sites, contacts) for further research (...) The Council of Europe is the continent's oldest political organization, founded in 1949. It groups together 47 countries, including 22 countries from Central and Eastern Europe, has a pending application from one additional country (Belarus), and has granted observer status to five other countries (the Holy See, United States, Canada, Japan and Mexico). The Council of Europe is distinct from the 25-nation European Union, but no country has ever joined the Union without first belonging to the Council of Europe."
• Global Warming: A Comparative Guide to the E.U. and the U.S. and Their Approaches to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol: "I [Deborah Paulus-Jagrič, Reference Librarian at New York University Law School Library] began this guide in the fall of 2006, just prior to a number of significant climate-related events. The Twelfth Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC and the Second Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (COP-12/MOP-2) were held in Nairobi in November 2006, as were the mid-term elections in the U.S.; in February 2007, the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report was released, which finds it all but certain that human activities are responsible for climate change. Discussions of climate change are everywhere. Here is just one example, to illustrate the current urgency: On January 17th, 2006, the BBC reported that the “Doomsday Clock” had been moved two minutes closer to midnight, partly because of the threat caused by carbon-emitting technologies. The symbolic clock, devised in 1947 by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which was founded in 1945 by former Manhattan Project physicists, now stands at 5 minutes to annihilation. A geoscientist from Princeton University said of the occasion: '...[T]his organization, which for 60 years has been monitoring and warning us about the nuclear threat, now recognizes climate change as a threat that deserves the same level of attention'."