SIGHT, SPICE AND SPAM

Seeing is believing

The New York Sun reports that the Metropolitan Transit Authority of New York (responsible for the subway, buses etc.) has applied to register the phrase “If you see something, say something”, used to encourage the public to be vigilant in the fight against terrorism, as a trade mark. Other transport authorities, who assumed that the phrase was free for everybody to use, are said to have been surprised. The IPKat can’t really see the point of this. He’s not sure that the phrase would distinguish the MTA, particularly if other transport authorities are using it, and he can’t see what use a mark with such negative connotations would be in the market place. In theory trade mark protection may enable the MTA to police the mark against parodists, but there are defences for parodists anyway.

New IP blog

Shamnad Basheer and Dev Gangjee of Oxford Intellectual Property Research Centre have started their own blog on Indian IP – SPICY IP. The IPKat says that if you’re interested in a (so far mainly patenty) insight of IP law and policy in India, it’s worth a visit.

And now for an experiment...

The IPKat is going to try enabling comment verification to see if he can stop the spamming of his comments by the many scamsters who pollute the internet. Apologies in advance if readers have any troubles posting comments because of this.