Friday fantasies

Please, PLEASE check the IPKat's side bar for news of forthcoming events -- it's a pity to miss that once-in-a-lifetime seminar or conference opportunity simply because it slipped beneath your radar. The Forthcoming Events column is updated two or three times a week and there's always something new on it.


Around the blogs. A new blog, masterminded by Mark Summerfield from Australian IP practice Watermark, has been launched under the portentous (or should that be 'patentous') title Patentology. Good luck, says the IPKat! Having written a bit about green patents of late, the IPKat stumbled across the Green Patent Blog, which readers may wish to take a look at; the author, Eric Lane, is a climate/cleantech IP attorney in San Diego. Congratulations to the Class 99 design law weblog on its 300th email subscriber and to the jiplp weblog for welcoming its 250th email subscriber.

A charming young friend of the IPKat, being a Turkish lawyer who is currently concluding a postgraduate course of study in London, is looking for a little experience with a London-based intellectual property/advertising law-based practice. Ideally this would be between 9 and 23 August. The Kat's friend does not expect remuneration, but does hope to gain some useful professional insights. If you can be of assistance, please email the IPKat here and he'll forward your expression of interest.


Scandinavian positions. No, this is not what some naughty readers might be thinking -- it's the subtitle of an email from the IPKat's friend Timo Minssen, Assistant Professor in the Centre for Information and Innovation Law, University of Copenhagen. Timo refers to Michael A. Kock’s article in JIPLP, "Purpose-bound protection for DNA sequences: in through the back door?" (available here) and writes:

"I have struggled with this issue for several years and have discussed the Swedish position in Klinische Forschung und Recht Nr. 3 & 4 (2008 – with reference to the Monsanto case in fn. 141). The article is in German and you can read it here. Since it seems to be generally difficult to get access to KliFoR I attach a link to my article here (with thanks to KliFoR for permission to do so). Given the relevance and immediacy of the problem I thought that the Kat team and its readers might perhaps be interested".

Shouldn't we all be keeping an eye on Twitter? While some write this medium off as trivial, lightweight and ephemeral, its capacity to boost a brand or to bruise it is huge. The Kat thanks his friend and fellow blogger Nikos Prentoulis for this link to a piece on the BPGlobalPR Twitter account, which sports the BP logo and has over 150,000 followers. The "PR" stands for Public Relations, but the site states: "We are not associated with Beyond Petroleum, the company that has been destroying the Gulf of Mexico for 52 days". Take a look and then ask yourself what you, as BP's brand advisor, would advise the company to do. You can also take a look at BP's Oil Spill Response website and ask yourself: "do you have any better ideas?"