Wednesday whimsies

The IPKat thanks his friend and 1709 Blog colleague Hugo Cox for drawing his attention to Content and Carrier, an impressively presented and well-written weblog on European electronic communications and media law from a talented team of Austrians with both professional and academic credentials. nb: the link to Content and Carrier, broken when this item was posted, has now been mended.

The Inventors Eye is a new bimonthly publication, put out by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) for the independent inventor community [says Merpel, if there's one bunch of people who are so cussedly independent that you can count on them never to be a community, it's probably independent inventors]. You can read issue one in full here.

Having visited London's Museum of Brands for the first time, this IPKat team member was most impressed with the sheer volume of its exhibits, given the limited amount of display space. The occasion for his visit was an opportunity to hear the UK government's Minister for Higher Education and Intellectual Property David Lammy MP give away some priceless personal information concerning the brands which were gifted with 'most favoured' status in the Lammy household. It occurred to the Kat that, with a room full of trade mark practitioners listening to a speech by a politician in a General Election year, the word "opposition" -- lodged by the one and feared by the other -- was an obvious common factor. You can read all about the Museum here.


Congratulations are due to Class 46, the European trade mark weblog which has been taken under the benign and supportive stewardship of Euro-TM organisation MARQUES. Yesterday Class 46 received its 1,000th subscriber, 26 months after it began life as a speculative venture in the spread of European trade mark law and brand-related news. The blog has nearly 1,800 searchable items, lovingly composed by an 11-strong team.


The Norwegians are busily celebrating a Big Event of their own. Norway has now taken the necessary steps to join the Geneva Act of the Hague Agreement on international design registration (see Class 99 here). This means that all of Europe's European Union and European Free Trade Association countries are now Hagued-up, which is good news for tidy-minded international design registration applicants. Thank you, Solvår Winnie Finnanger, for this information.

The World Intellectual Property Organization's popular WIPO Magazine has just published issue 1 for 2010 (contents here). From the cover you can easily spot the theme: IP litigation costs. Contributors include IPKat team blogger Jeremy ("Keep it cheap: Ten Tips for Minimizing IP Dispute Settlement Costs", here), his friend and PatLit team blogging colleague Michael Burdon ("The UK: Can a High-Cost Country Change Its Way?", here) and a piece by Berly Lelievre-Acosta, WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center, entitled "A cost-effective alternative", here, which reminds readers of the alternative dispute resolution options which await those who would prefer not to litigate. Jeremy would like to thank the various readers who sent in their ideas and suggestions for keeping IP litigation costs down, but can't at the moment find where he left the folder with their names ...