Friday fantasies

Several fresh events have been added to the IPKat's Forthcoming Events page, including a good number that offer discounts on the registration fee in respect of IPKat weblog readers (special offers are usually easy to spot, since they tend to be in bold red text). Do check the list from time to time and see if anything takes your fancy!

Younger no more. A big katpat goes to Serena Tierney (head of IP, Bircham Dyson Bell LLP) for letting us know that Baroness Neville-Rolfe DBE has replaced Viscount Younger of Leckie as Minister for Intellectual Property in the UK government.  Baroness Neville-Rolfe was appointed Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills yesterday. Her interests include art, architecture, cricket, racing and gardening [which probably makes her better qualified than several of her predecessors to hold the brief for intellectual property, adds Merpel].

Back in March 2012, the Indian Patent Office granted its first-ever Indian compulsory licence to Natco to produce and sell Bayer’s anti-cancer drug, Nexavar [noted by the IPKat here]. Bayer, having lost on appeal before the Indian Patent Appeal Board (IPAB), appealed further to the Mumbai High Court. This Tuesday 15 July the Mumbai High Court dismissed Bayer’s appeal, stating that there is “no reason to interfere with the [IPAB’s decision]”. A katpat goes to Michael Lin (Marks&Clerk Hong Kong) for spotting this and drawing it to our attention.

Following his earlier blog post today, inviting readers to advise the UK government on whether it should make representations to the Court of Justice of the European Union on two appeals on Community trade mark matters, this Kat has just spotted a little note at the end of the UK Intellectual Property Office's circular concerning readers' comments. It reads:

Please note: The information you supply will be held in accordance with the Data Protection Act 1988 and the Freedom of Information Act 2000. Information will only be used for its intended purpose. It will not be published, sold or used for sales purposes.

If you thought that the UKIPO was about to cash in on your wise comments, you can now stop worrying and breathe easily.  Merpel adds: readers' comments won't be "be published, sold or used for sales purposes" -- but it doesn't say that they'll be read either ...

Some people say that printing out
blogposts to read them at your leisure
enhances the reading experience ...

Around the weblogs.  Over on IP Finance, this Kat is excited to tell readers about AISTEMOS, a new venture founded and brainchilded ["ouch", says Merpel, who has mixed feelings about turning nouns into verbs] by his friend, former colleague and long-time-ago former student Nigel Swycher. On Afro-IP, Kingsley Egbuonu considers a recent review of patent trolling threats in Nigeria. The 1709 Blog hosts a good little piece from Bristows' Tom Ohta on orphan works in the UK: it seems that they are to be adopted and, er, licensed by the Inellectual Property Office, while Ben Challis's CopyKat round-up is as eye-catching and thought-provoking as ever. The jiplp weblog trumpets the early publication of its August issue, graced by fellow Kat Eleonora's editorial, and also growls at naughty people who try to use that august journal's LinkedIn Readers and Writers Group as a dumping ground for law firm newsletters and sundry advertising. Finally, "Equality and Diversity in Intellectual Property" is the latest must-read post from Mark Anderson on IP Draughts.