Wednesday whimsies

The Official Journal of the European Union confirms, in its Information concerning the date of entry into force of the WIPO Copyright Treaty and of the WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty, that those two treaties will enter into force, with respect to the European Union, on 14 March 2010. 14 March is, incidentally, the 329th anniversary of Georg Philipp Telemann, who never benefited from copyright protection at all. The IPKat has often wondered, in the wake of the Walkman and the Discman, whether there was any reason why no mobile telephone ('cellphone' to most of our readers) was ever called the Teleman ...


Around the blogs. Congratulations are due to the famously recondite SPC Blog for reaching the absurdly high figure of 700 email subscribers even though it offers nothing more appealing than some nerdy and detailed stuff about extending the life of certain species of patent. There's also a landmark celebration for Fashionista-at-Law, which covers all sorts of legal and commercial issues in the fashion sector -- including IP -- and which has now reached the 400 subscriber mark.


If you'd like a copy of the hand-out that accompanied the paper given by PatLit team member Michael Burdon on "Faster and Cheaper? A Current Review of IP Litigation Reform" at last month's Intellectual Property Law Update conference, just email Jeremy here and he'll forward it to you.