Friday fantasies

It's Friday again ... and time to check the IPKat's sidebar for news of forthcoming seminars, talks, events and other ways to fill in time while pleasurably discussing your favourite IP issues with like-minded souls.


The new images of the IPKat and Merpel were unveiled earlier this week, so now it's the turn of the AmeriKat, seen flying off this page at this very moment in search of exciting new tidbits of IP legal news which she can bring back from the United States of America. You can follow the exploits of the AmeriKat (almost) every week on this very weblog, so watch this space ...

The United States is not the only US. A longtime friend and sometime colleague of IPKat team member Jeremy is Uma Suthersanen (note for the unobservant: US is, or are, her initials ...). Uma edits the European Copyright and Design Reports (ECDR), for which purpose she is seeking an English language translation of a recent German Bundesgerichtshof decision that GEMA is not entitled to administer the right to use music in advertisements. Does anyone have a copy for her?

Mark 1 July 2010 in your diaries if you have anything to do with the Patent Co-operation Treaty (PCT). This is the date when the amendments made last year to the PCT come into force. You can read all about it, and even peruse certified copies of the amendments in English and French, here.


IPKat reader Ben McEniery writes to ask as follows: "A patent application for a financial service is now available for public review on the Peer-to-Patent Australia website here . Has this been done before?" If anyone knows, can they please post a comment to that effect below.

Around the blogs. The IPKat's attention has just been drawn to a new US IP lobby-blog: it's the Computer & Communications Industry Association's Innovation Policy Post. The CCIA doesn't like patent trolls, if its list of five patent law wishes for 2010 is anything to go by. SOLO IP, the weblog of IP practitioners who work alone or in very small units, is keen to recruit more regular contributors to its blogging team, in order to increase the through-put of content and to raise the general level of the blog's utility. If you'd like to offer yourself as a potential SOLO IP blogger, email Filemot here and give her an idea of your credentials. The jiplp weblog has resumed its publication of Current Intelligence articles from the Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice today, with this item on Fifa's attempt to prevent Ferrero exploiting trade marks which alluded to the football World Cup 2010.