Wednesday whimsies

Loz Kaye and the IPKat may not share
the same political and legal outlook,
but they are united in their affection
for little woolly hats

The Pirate Party UK has declared its hand with regard to the forthcoming Oldham East and Saddleworth by-election -- and this may be a little embarrassing for one of Europe's leading media and IP lawyers.  A long-standing and much-admired friend of the IPKat is Laurence Kaye, solicitor, blogger and level-headed commentator on IP/media matters.  Now, the Pirate Party UK candidate for for election to the Mother of Parliaments is its current leader ... Laurence Kaye.  This Laurence Kaye, known as "Loz", blogs and tweets;  a supporter of Wikileaks, he is campaigning on a platform promoting freedom of speech and government transparency.  By profession (and this is surprising, given his attitude to copyright) he is a composer and musical director, currently teaching at the Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts. The IPKat notes that this by-election has actually been caused by the exercise of freedom of speech by the incumbent Member of Parliament Phil Woolas, who was stripped of his Parliamentary seat (starting salary £65,738 plus generous expenses allowance and you get to vote to decide what your pay should be) after saying some naughtily untrue things about a fellow candidate.

DV or not DV, that is the question.  On the subject of people with confusingly similar names, not everyone knows that there is a difference between Dirk Visser and Derk Visser.  The IPKat is therefore pleased to remove any misapprehension which readers may be cultivating.  Dirk is Professor of intellectual property law at Leiden University and a partner with Dutch IP specialists Klos Morel Vos & Schaap in Amsterdam.  Derk, in contrast, is a patent attorney at EIP and Lecturer in European patent law with CEIPI in Strasbourg.

Above, left: Darth Vader, disguised as Tufty the Cat;
below, right: Tufty the Cat, disguised as David Vaver

On the dark side, Merpel reminds the IPKat, we should not forget an extremely valuable intellectual property who shares the same initials as Dirk and Derk Visser: Darth Vader -- which in verbal terms is not actually much different from another IP landmark, David Vaver.  And before you say that there's no likelihood of confusion between the latter pair, taking account of their visual, aural and conceptual components, remember that the European Union is blessed with a General Court which is easily likely to be confused.

Darth Vader, this time
not disguised as Tufty,
listens to the IP Strategy
podcasts

IP strategist, pod-jock and nice guy Duncan Bucknell has been investing a huge amount of time, effort and thought in getting his series of IP podcasts (it says "by Think IP Strategy", which is what his outfit now calls itself, but we still call it IP ThinkTank, which us easier to remember) up-and-running.  Until today IPKat team member Jeremy has had no time for all this tomfoolery with podcasts -- but now that he has finally worked out how to turn his iPod on, he has decided that the time has come to adopt a more positive stance.  Anyway, you can download and/or subscribe to the entire current series of IP Strategy podcasts, free of charge, via iTunes here.  Enjoy!

Around the weblogs. The jiplp blog, which is tied to the Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice (JIPLP), traditionally publishes a fair bit of subscription copy free-of-charge, including the monthly editorials.  The editorial for the January 2011 issue is a bit of a break with traditional -- it's a guest piece, written by Editorial Board member and Scottish solicitor Gill Grassie (Maclay, Murray & Spens, LLP) on IP and environment/climate change: "Pooling together: IP as hero or villain?". You can read Gill's opinions here.   Those readers who are into patent litigation one way or another will be pleased to note that PatLit has published a complete list of its "PCC Pages" series on England and Wales's increasingly affordable and user-friendly Patents County Court.  The affable, imaginative and culture-wise Gino van Roeyen, one of the MARQUES Class 46 trade mark blog team, has posted the fruits of his legal, historical and sociological musings in "Ex Parte SANTA CLAUS": you can find it on mr-online here.