Friday felony

The IPKat's 'Forthcoming Events' feature, which you will find in the left-hand side-bar of this weblog's front page, contains some fresh entries which you may not yet have seen. Don't forget to check them out.


After the IPKat and Afro-IP's IP Leo comes another example of animalistic intellectual property blogs, this time from Australia in the form of IPRoo. Masterminded by the blogging team of Rob Roy Rankin, Ben Roxborough and the ever-productive Duncan Bucknell, it looks like one to watch. The IPKat wishes his cousins Down Under all the very best in their venture.

A little while ago the IPKat asked if anyone had the text of a poem by Wendy Cope (right) on copyright protection. He has since been sent a handy link to it here, courtesy of Thorsten Lauterbach (to whom the Kat's thanks are owed).


The Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market -- which runs European Community trade mark and design registrations -- is launching its new website on 1 July. A webpage explaining the changes has gone live today. The IPKat is really pleased at the relaunch, since he has spent many perplexing hours struggling with its predecessor. He notices that the illustration on the screen-grab features a hot-air balloon. Which Board of Appeal provides the most hot air, he wonders ...


Veteran copyright scholar Paul Geller has taken the opportunity to share some of his deep thinking on the subject by setting up Critical Copyright. He describes this as "a kind of slow blog", which is no bad thing in these days of ephemeral thought and even more ephemeral expression of it. Among Critical Copyright's more provocative contents are its Principles feature, a sort of 10 Commandments for the cognoscenti.


From the IPKat's friend Birgit Clark comes this fishy dispute over an application to register as a Canadian trade mark the words FIJI OCEAN for tinned fish. The applicant, Kohinoor Grocery Ltd of Surrey, British Columbia, faces not only opposition proceedings from the Fijian embassy but the removal of its goods from major Canadian retail chains that continue to stock fish bearing that mark. For the record, the tinned fish is labelled Product of Chile. FIJI OCEAN is employed by the Government of Fiji for the certification of goods and services in Fiji and for Fijian goods and services for export.