Friday fripperies

It's that time of the week again - and the IPKat has a few little bits and pieces to keep you productively thinking over the weekend period.

Google patent search. The IPKat's valued friend John Halton has just drawn his attention to the Google patent search facility at www.google.com/patents. It seems to be a Beta site, so things can only get beta ...

The front page is clean, crisp and easy on the eye; you can search under Web, Images, Video, News, Maps and More ... and there's a continuously changing selection of five featured patents if you just fancy a gentle browse. Google offer over 7 million patents, though that's not the same as 7 million inventions. The Patent Search Help facility even helps laymen make some sense of their search results once they've got them.

On the subject of cats, Merpel got 224 hits for 'cat' patents in the remarkably cool time of 0.0 seconds. Many thanks, John, your recommendation.

RSS feeders. The IPKat received lots of emails from people who read this blog via RSS feeds and just wants to say a huge thanks to all of you who contacted him. Not being a big RSS man himself, he's surprised at how many people do.

Public image = public domain. The IPKat's friend, worthy copyright guru Ben Challis (left), has forwarded him some fascinating information concerning Jin Youhzi (right), brother of the last Emperor of China, Aisin Giorro Pu yi, who lost a claim to protect his late brother’s image rights. Jin, now aged 88, filed the suit in Bejing objecting to an official exhibition in the Forbidden City. This exhibition, which focused on his brother's life, allegedly violated the image rights of the deceased and hurt his survivors. The exhibition was in the former imperial palace of the Ming and Qing dynasties. He sought closure of the exhibition, legal costs and public apologies. On 14 July the Beijing Dongcheng District People's Court rejected the claim and the Beijing No. 2 Intermediate People's Court has dismissed the appeal: the late Emperor was a public figure whose life was closely connected with China’s history and was thus in the public domain.

More information here and here. Another Chinese privacy case - noted by the IPKat here.

Not just any old IPKat ...

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* PermaKat Eleonora Rosati and The IPKat are expressly recommended as sources to follow to get an "unstuffy look at IP issues" according to Legal Business, April 2023.

* PermaKat Eleonora Rosati received the 2022 Adepi Award.

* PermaKat Eleonora Rosati listed as one of the World Intellectual Property Review's "Influential Women in IP" of 2020.

* PermaKat Eleonora Rosati listed as one of the Managing Intellectual Property magazine's "Fifty Most Influential People" of 2018.

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* Recommended by the European Patent Office as reading material for candidates for the European Qualifying Examinations, 2013.

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* ComputerWeekly IT Law and Governance Blog of the Year, 20 August 2008.

* Best of the Blogs, Times Online, 21 August 2008.

2 comments:

AnonymousFriday, 15 December 2006 at 15:45:00 GMT
Google Patent Search is a useful tool. However it must be remembered that it is based on the USPTO records and therefore only shows patents which have issued in the United States of America.
AnonymousWednesday, 20 December 2006 at 03:39:00 GMT
Many are talking, few are realing thinking about Google Patent Search. Google is in the business of analysing what you search for and then selling that knowledge to someone, anyone in fact.

Inventors might like to be a little circumspect in their use of GPS in case enough details of their potential invention are picked up and sold to someone who might not have their best interests in mind.

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