Friday fantasies

Friday may not be the end of the week for most people, but it marks the end of the working week for most IP practitioners and their clients, as well as the many administrators, policy-makers and 24/7 devotees of the subject. To all of you the IPKat extends his greetings and politely reminds you to check out the list of forthcoming events in his side bar.


The IPKat has received a copy of Charles R. Macedo's book, The Corporate Insider's Guide to US Patent Practice, which he will soon be reviewing for the PatLit weblog. One thing that amuses the Kat is the discovery that authors with highly-specialised interests (in this case US patent law) sometimes venture out of their specialities into other, quite different fields. This is the same Charles Macedo who has recently written this Current Intelligence note on Janky v Lake County Convention and Visitors Bureau, a 7th Circuit appeal decision on the joint authorship of a doo-wop song. Such versatility ... Merpel asks, in the light of Mr Macedo's face-furniture, can we assume that he also has an interest in barbershop?


The subject of assisted suicide and Dignitas cropped up yesterday and the IPKat, noticing that the organisation has neither Community trade mark nor UK registrations for its name, wondered what Classes under the Nice Classification it might be advised to cover. Merpel was wondering, too, whether the name might be descriptive of the manner in which Dignitas seeks to carry out its functions, and therefore unregistrable. Any thoughts?

The Intellectual Property Institute (IPI), London, has recently released "The Economics of Intellectual Property Rights and Climate Change: Three New Studies Provide a More Scientific Basis to the Debate", a ten-page pdf file which you can download here. According to the executive summary, "The papers [by Daniel K. N Johnson and Kristina Lybecker of Colorado College] provide a comprehensive review of the current body of economics research and a wealth of information on various aspects of the debate and show that a broad consensus among economists on the role that IPRs play in the low-carbon technology space is forming".

If you want to know how the House of Lords debate over the UK's Digital Economy Bill kicked off, Hugo Cox has given it an appropriately reverential treatment on the 1709 Blog here.

If you want to know how the Administrative Council of the European Patent Office is still foundering over the election of a new President, Axel Horns' IP::JUR blog is a good place to look for news and comment.