PUBLISHERS’ POINTS

* Law publishers Globe White Page have just sent the IPKat a free copy of issue two of Intellectual Asset Management (September/October 2003). The cover story is “Microsoft gets serious about IP”. This may be startling news for those of us who have just returned from a distant galaxy, but for the rest of us it's about as surprising as "Rain sometimes falls in England". The article is however quite informative, giving a good account of how Marshall Phelps plans to rework Microsoft’s IP strategy in the coming years. Ed Kahn’s piece on patent mining and Joff Wild’s review of the nanotech patent market are also worth a read.

* Thomson’s UK imprint Sweet & Maxwell is running a “fire sale” of 30% off more than 110 titles, in areas including intellectual property. Bargains include Copinger & Skone James on Copyright (reduced from £460 to £322), Terrell on the Law of Patents (from £285 to £200) and Gerald Paterson’s European Patent System (from £205 to £144). The IPKat is not impressed by this sale. In terms of the books’ overall value, the reduced prices probably reflect the length of time they have lost currency while they were sitting in the publisher’s warehouses. More to the point, when books are more sensibly priced and are not bloated with hundreds of pages of appendices, more people will buy them while they’re still relatively up-to-date.