Monday miscellany

Here's a little news of enlightened self-interest. The World Intellectual Property Organization has happily announced that Italy has given it an extra-budgetary contribution of €1 million, to cement good relations between the UN agency and the home of some of the world's tastiest geographical indications. Fortunately there are no strings attached to this gift, which is said to reflect

"... Italy’s commitment to consolidating and reinforcing its contribution to the activities of WIPO since the establishment of a funds-in-trust (FIT) program in 2007 to cover IP-related activities in developing countries and countries in transition".

It's not clear to the IPKat whether Italy counts as "developing" or merely "in transition, but

"Part of the funds announced by Italy will support the development of a Global IP-Based Entrepreneurship Program, an interdisciplinary pilot training program which would initially be hosted by an Italian University. The program will rely on the case studies of successful use of the IP system by SMEs in the OECD countries, notably Italy".

As of Thursday 10 December, the .eu domain has become available not only to those of use who use conventional Latin letters but to those who employ Greek and Cyrillic. According to OHIM we can now expect to see such truly (non)harmonised domains as www. διαδίκτυο.eu or www.роуминг.eu -- though many of us would prefer to click on them rather than sit there saying, "Ctrl Alt and er, ... what?" all the time.

Left: It's a good day for metaphors as the Rosetta Stone becomes the new Holy Grail for .eu registration

Now here's a brain-teaser from IPKat team member Mark: According to which criteria is the following list of IP organizations ordered:

1. AIPPI (Association Internationale pour la Protection de la Propriété Intellectuelle);
2. ECTA (European Community Trademark Association);
3. FICPI (Fédération Internationale des Conseillers en Propriété Industrielle);
4. INTA (International Trademark Association);
5. Union of European Practitioners in Intellectual Property.

If you know the answer, please don't email -- just post it below.