Some Dates for the Diary: EUPACO; Patenting Lives Workshop; SLSA

The European Patent Conference (EUPACO) will be held in Brussels this week, Wednesday 24 January (programme). The Conference is free and open to all, but registration is advised. Speakers from the US and across Europe, including the IPKat's own Johanna Gibson, will present current research, policy, and proposals for reform of the EU patent system.

The Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII), which launched the EUPACO, is a not-for-profit civil society organisation concerned particularly with information technology and market competition in this sector. Although FFII is particularly with the impact of patent frameworks on software development, the EUPACO will be examining patent frameworks in diverse fields of technology, with a view to comprehensive debate on future patent policy in Europe.

(Right: Not one of IPKat's favourites)

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patentingLIVES. The second free public workshop in the Patenting Lives series will be held in London, 12 February 2007.

The workshop will deal with the potential overlap of protection for signs as both trade marks and designs (although the IPKat is more concerned with the overlap at right). This issue is particularly important because designs give broader protection, while trade marks are potentially protected indefinitely. Therefore, the overlap in rights has generated much concern.

The issue will be addressed by a distinguished panel:

• Tibor Gold MBE, Partner, Kilburn & Strode
• David Musker, Partner, RGC Jenkins & Co
  
• Spyros Maniatis, Professor of Intellectual Property, Queen Mary CCLS

The discussion will be chaired by Simon Malynicz, Intellectual Property Barrister, Hogarth Chambers.

The workshop will be held at 6pm in the Intellectual Property Seminar Room, Charterhouse Square (#1 on the map), and will be followed by drinks.

The workshop is free but numbers are limited, so please register by email to Johanna Gibson. More details will be available soon on Patenting Lives.

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The Socio-Legal Studies Association (SLSA) Conference will be held this year at the University of Kent. SLSA 2007 will bring together socio-legal researchers in a range of areas, including medical law. Rena Gertz, a research fellow at the University of Edinburgh has been in touch with the IPKat to let him know that she will be accepting papers for consideration for the medical law stream until 28 February 2007.

The medical law stream invites papers from academics and professionals - with expertise in law, social sciences and other relevant disciplines - on any aspect of medical law and ethics, including but not restricted to issues arising from the interface between criminal law and medical law, issues surrounding genetics and genomics, beginning and end of life and bodies as property. Rena asks that abstracts be sent as a Word attachment directly to both of the following email addresses by 28 February 2007: Rena.Gertz@ed.ac.uk and gnw@aber.ac.uk.