Friday follies

IPKat team blogger Jeremy has just acquired some new colleagues. According to yesterday's Legal Week, Holborn-based law firm Olswang (where he spends two days a week) has taken over a five-strong intellectual property team from Kilpatrick Stockton, led by high-profile department head Helen Newman (right). Olswang's IP department now has 14 partners, 34 additional fee earners and 0.4 Kats. Helen has acted for BACARDI and MARTINI, but is reputed to have acted for some non-alcoholic clients too ...


Writing in the UK Intellectual Property Office newsletter Insight, Miles Rees, Business Development Manager of the UK-IPO, says: "IP is the glue that holds innovation together". No stranger to the art of the metaphor, the IPKat nonetheless wonders whether this is the right one. The functionality of glue lies in its ability to gum things up, which (a cynic might say) makes it an apt IP metaphor for a civil servant to choose. The IPKat prefers oil: IP is the lubricant that enables innovators, investors, manufacturers and consumers to rub along without too much friction - it being competition law that provides the glue. Merpel says, how about some other metaphors, based on IP being like blood, milk, whisky, Sunny Delight or any other liquid you care to name?


Chef Sues Over Intellectual Property (the Menu), runs the title of a story in the New York Times dug up by the diligent Miri Frankel. The story relates how successul restaurateuse Rebecca Charles - who opened the Pearl Oyster Bar in the West Village a decade ago - has had to accommodate herself to the arrival of a string of restaurants she considers “knockoffs” of her own. She is now suing the proprietor of Ed's Lobster Bar for theft of her intellectual property. The report, with unconscious irony, says Ms Charles' Pearl Oyster Bar was itself inspired by the Swan Oyster Depot in San Francisco, adding:

"My restaurant is a personal reflection of me, my experience, my family. That restaurant is me".

'nuff said.