Monday miscellany

Nobody reminded you last Friday to check the IPKat's Forthcoming Events page, which currently contains over 30 upcoming attractions.  It's updated on an almost daily basis, for your interest and your delectation.


Around the blogs. The IPKat has recently had the chance to take a look at IP Sharing ("partage de savoir en propriété intellectuelle"), a participative IP weblog masterminded by the charming and erudite French lawyers Sébastien Oddos and David Lefranc. You can enjoy this tasty dish in English or French. Bon appetit!  Elsewhere, PatLit -- a specialist patent litigation weblog which now contains getting on for 300 searchable posts -- has reached the 600 email subscriber milestone.  And if you appreciate a good begging email, you may want to savour the three IP scams posted on IP Finance: there's even a poll so that you can help decide which is the best.


For people who are too lazy
to drink their coffee ...
Recently published.  The new WIPO Magazine (here) is replete with easy-to-read goodies for IP folk in search of a little comfort and some good anecdotal material concerning the virtues of IP in the world today.  The IPKat's tip? He likes "Anyone for coffee? The story behind the coffee capsule" (here).  The October European Intellectual Property Review (EIPR) is out now too, with a bright and breezy piece by Indian lawyer Arpan Banerjee on "How Hollywood can sue Bollywood for Copyright Infringement and Save Indian Cinema" -- which surely deserves a prize for being the second most striking title of any article published this year.  The September CIPA Journal is now in circulation too.  Among its contents is an article by Andrea Brewster entitled "The secret-but-available-on-IPKat diary of a CIPA Council member", which surely deserves a prize for being the most striking title of any article published this year ...


If you know as little as the IPKat does about Protecode, you might want to find out more here.  According to the promotional material, Protecode has announced "a significant new capability that will enable software development organizations to view their code from a pure license obligation perspective reported in plain English". Anything which claims "plain English" appeals to the IPKat.  The company is transatlantic but, by way of mitigation, is Canadian.  So if you dabble in anything open source, this might just come in handy ...


There was some money available for a juicy EU-funded research project on "patent costs: international comparison and analysis of the impact on the exploitation of R&D results by SMEs, universities, and public research organisations".  Sadly, no-one got it.  According to Ted (not a cuddly bear, but Tenders Electronic Daily) "the contract has not been successfully awarded due to the impossibility for 1 of the members of the winning consortium to present the proofs of fulfilment of the exclusion criteria. The contract might be subject to a new publication in case there is budget availability for this action in the coming years' work programmes".  Indeed.  It is the IPKat's impression that ticking all the boxes in order to get a research contract these days is more difficult than doing the research itself.  Any comments?
Monday miscellany Monday miscellany Reviewed by Jeremy on Monday, October 04, 2010 Rating: 5

1 comment:

  1. Since you professed little knowledge about Protecode, here is a 2 minute abridged version of an executive summery-highlights.

    Protecode develops automated solutions for detecting and managing open source (and any third party) code in a company’s portfolio. This is the equivalent of scanning your PowerPoint presentation and trying to figure out where each icon, graphics, text or page came from, and who has the copyright and if there is a license associated with those bits and pieces. How we do it is a different subject and I will gladly explain it if you are interested- suffice to say that we have a HUGE reference database of anything that looks/feels/smells like code in the world.

    We believe that good developers (and PowerPoint chart creators) are resourceful, and they apply their expertise in bettering or modifying what’s available. Nothing wrong with that, it cuts costs, time, and creates a better product (or presentation) at the end of the day, as long as the obligations are known and understood.

    The company has been around for four years, and its roots are in software technology. We are based in Ottawa, Canada, and our reference databases are located in the two coasts of the Canadian land. The founders had a first-hand experience of the pain associated with not knowing what their developers put in their code for decades. We are twenty people full time, plus five or so esteemed contributors providing services in exchange for immediate and significant financial gain (contractors).

    Our primary business is based on licensing our product to companies large and small, but we have a side business of providing one-time software code audit service to companies that are going through an M&A process. Our products help internal counsels, corporate IP lawyers and business decision makers make informed recommendations/decisions.

    Let me know if you would like any more information and I’ll be glad to provide it. And thank you for maintaining an informative and easy-to-read site!

    ReplyDelete

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