Friday fantasmagoria

It may be the height of the holiday season, but the list of forthcoming events listed in the IPKat's side bar just keeps growing. Check it out: there are so many exciting and appealing things to attend.

The IPKat's friend, scholar Luca Escoffier (Visiting Scholar at CASRIP, University of Washington), writes with latest news on the project on IP precedents on which the Waseda University in Japan is working together with CASRIP:

"The Research Center for the Legal System of Intellectual Property Law, RCLIP, at Waseda University (Japan) has recently included new summaries from Germany, France, and Italy in the IP Precedents Database, which has been developed for Asian nations (China, Taiwan, India, Indonesia, Korea, Thailand). Precedents from other European nations, such as Spain and the UK, will be included too.

The IP Precedents Database can be freely consulted here.

Each case features an RCLIP number for citation purposes. All users are kindly requested to use this reference as well when citing the document in a paper or alike."

Around the blogs. The fashion law weblog Fashionista-at-Law has now hit the 250 mark for email subscribers (well done!). Er, and that's about it for this week -- a monumentally quiet week in the history of intellectual property blogging. The Fashionista is already choosing her wardrobe for Handbags at Dawn, this year's one-day Fashion and IP conference which takes place on Tuesday 22 September and which she's sponsoring (bookings are happily buoyant, particularly when the organisers, CLT, said that registrants could bring a friend for free). Details of the conference programme and speakers here. And as I write, I've just ascertained that specialist copyright weblog The 1709 Blog, has also just reached the 250 email subscriber mark.


Dr Michael Wisz (Emerjent) writes excitedly to tell the IPKat's readers:

"... we have developed a powerful web application that might be of interest .... Our main application, called Espresso, is an "emerging technology" search tool that allows you to simultaneously search US patents, research papers, funding grants, and recent news. The results returned are not only listings of the relevant documents, but also a distilled and ranked list of the top people, companies, and universities behind the technology of interest.

Beyond the simple search capability, we have also built in an email alert system, document sharing, collaboration tools, and a totally customizable "technology dashboard" that allows you to "follow" a technology, person, or company (and updates itself every night according to the latest patents, research, funding, and news!)".

Michael is now offering 30-day free trials of all the above features (and after that $20/month). For more information you can email him here.

From the IPKat's friend Rebecca Dimaridis comes news of PLCAdvantage, a new scheme designed to help out-of-work lawyers stay connected to the law and market practice. PLCAdvantage provides registered users with free access to PLC’s unrivalled current awareness and know-how (which includes lots of intellectual property!), and eases the return to fee-earning by keeping out-of-work lawyers up-to-date and constantly informed. Registration is simple -- just click here. The Kats haven't had a chance to delve, but assume that the law in question, and therefore the offer, applies to specifically to those qualified to practise in England and Wales.


The IPKat thanks the following good souls:

* Glyn Wintle for this link to a most informative piece on the Open Rights Group website about Kingston-upon-Hull's Karoo internet service provider and its sudden step back from the shoot-on-sight 'One Strike and You're Out' policy for cutting off file sharers, based on one accusation of infringement and no requirement of proof. Instead, Karoo will now cut users off only, it seems, where there is a court order to that effect;

* Miri Frankel (Beanstalk) for this link to a surprising article on WalletPop on the possibility of regulation by the FTC in the United States of the use of celebrities in television advertising.