The bench rules

Every bench keeps a piece about itself, and this is ours. The bench rules are the conditions under which the journal is written, the things it will and will not do, and the honest account of where these pages come from.

Read against the record

Every piece names its sources in the margin: the offices and organisations that keep the record, WIPO, EUIPO, the USPTO, INTA, the EU's quality schemes register, the assay offices, the consortia. The journal does not cite anonymous authority and does not quote what it cannot show. Where the record is ambiguous, the piece says so rather than smoothing it over.

A journal, not a counter

Readers who need a filing, an opinion or a defence need a registered attorney; the bench's only product is attention, struck and dated. No piece here creates a client relationship, and none should be read as counsel.

An honest history

Marks in Common is not that initiative and does not claim its mantle; the old pages are noted as history, restored where a reader might still look for them, and the initiative's name is used only to describe the record.

Corrections in the open

When a piece is wrong, it is corrected and redated; the journal does not quietly rewrite itself. The surest way to move the bench is a note with its source attached, sent to [email protected]. Names stay in letters; only the piece goes on the bench. The rule is the same one the bench praises everywhere else: a promise is only as good as the office willing to amend it.