Wednesday whimsies

Kats are not biologically equipped to play any wind instruments, but this one feels mildly tempted to try blowing its own trumpet just a little. Yesterday this weblog secured its 4,000th email subscriber. The Kats are indebted to all their subscribers, and not just the most recent ones, for their support, comments, insights and for their shared passion for this most exciting of areas of law. Thanks!

Have you entertained any thoughts of volunteering to review IP books for a serious journal? And/or do you have some bright ideas for making book reviews more fun? Do you have strong feelings about whether book reviews are best left to the print medium or whether they are more useful online? If so, the Journal of Intellectual Property Law and Practice (JIPLP) would quite like to hear from you. Click here for further details.

Congratulations are also due to The SPC Blog, arguably the most nerdy, recondite, single-issue weblog in the IP blogosphere, for improbably securing its 750th email subscriber. Unless regular patent term extensions and paediatric extensions count as more than a single issue, that is ...

The IPKat has had a request for assistance from Bhupendra Nirajan from Kathmandu, Nepal, who works for the Nepal Health Research Council -- the nation's top body to regulate health research activities. Says Bhupendra, "Currently we are developing national IPR guidelines on health (both biomedical and traditional systems of medicine and its resources). Can you please suggest for me some references and other relevant issues. If you'd like to be of assistance, please email Bhupendra here.

The IP Finance weblog is hosting an exciting event to mark World Intellectual Property Day on Monday 26 April: lunchtime speaker Marjolijn Vencken (Trouble in Paradise) is coming to talk on "Brands and the Cost of Corporate Conscience". Fuller details and booking arrangements for this seminar, for which admission is free, can be found here, but you'll have to book speedily if you want to avoid disappointment.

Feeling very frustrated, the IPKat is in possession of two handsome copies of the Complete Guide to Passing the European Qualifying Exam and qualifying as a European Patent Attorney, by Simon Roberts and Andrew Rudge. This, the brand-new 2010 edition, is published by Sweet & Maxwell (click here for details), and retails at a very reasonable £135 (if you pass the exam you won't have to work many chargeable hours to recoup that outlay!) The IPKat's problem is that he has had several stabs at coming up with a really good competition for which these volumes would be the prizes but none of them, he feels, is up to his usual standard. So, if any reader has a good idea for a competition -- and it has to be something to do with patents -- for which this excellent tome is an appropriate prize, please email the IPKat here.

Are Internet Service Providers (ISPs) better off as "dumb pipes", or should they follow the advice of BPI and offer 'bundled-to-own' subscriptions? This is the question, reports DigitalMediaWire. Says BPI, which represents the copyright interests of the UK's recorded music industry, the ISPs could net themselves over £100 million by 2013. If there were a prize for catty comment of the year so far, it might just be this, from popular ISP TalkTalk:

"TalkTalk thanks the BPI for its strategic business advice. Though some may question the value of such insight from an industry which has failed to acknowledge the impact of new technology on its own business models and is pressing the Government to criminalise its biggest customers".