Wednesday whimsies

IMPORTANT MESSAGE, if you're attending the IPKat's Google AdWord Rapid Response seminar. With over 150 people registered, and a burgeoning reserve list, tomorrow afternoon's seminar looks like being a huge event in more ways than one. Visitors are flying in from over 10 countries and there will be some great opportunities for analysis, discussion and explanation of yesterday's Court of Justice decision (here). To make things easier for everyone attending, registration is now possible from 4.00pm. The seminar still starts at 4.30pm and finishes at 6.30pm, but we don't have to leave immediately. The venue hosts, Ashurst, have kindly agreed to provide some refreshments too. Oh, and to find 9 Appold Street, click here. Don't be late! And if anyone has a really good camera and can take photos to a professional standard, an Austrian newspaper is asking for them ...


Around the blogs. Congratulations to the 1709 Copyright Blog, now up to its 500th email subscriber -- mainly thanks to the never-ending arguments over P2P, piracy and other popular perennials. And a warm welcome for IP Insider, the new weblog from Bruce Berman (Brody Berman). Bruce modestly doesn't mention himself by name on his home page, but he does at least remind readers that (he says):

"As an intellectual property advisor and writer, I am close to the latest developments and brightest people. Since 1988 I have been working with patent holders, managers and investors to frame them and properly convey their assets, transactions and disputes".

Good luck, Bruce, says the IPKat, it looks like lively stuff. Not sure I'd have chosen that name, says Merpel, since Law.com seems to host an IP Insider too.


Today is Budget Day in the United Kingdom -- a fact which may, or may not, make its mark on the IP communities and their various business activities. If any IP-related budgetary news breaks, such as favoured tax treatment for R&D or IP licences, the IPKat will try to bring it to his readers in a reader-friendly manner. He'll be following developments on the Budget Blog of Olswang LLP, which you can follow too if you can't wait for the Kat's pronouncements. Budget Blog here. Cat gift ideas for people on a low budget here.


According to a press release from the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) yesterday, demand for WIPO’s dispute resolution services, in particular relating to cybersquatting cases, continued in 2009 with trade mark holders filing 2,107 complaints under procedures based on the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP). Happily for the eco-lobby, the processing of UDRP complaints became a paperless operation at the end of the year. Bad news for pensioned-off attorneys looking for a little extra revenue is that this caseload represents a 9.5% decrease over 2008. This depressing fact is not compensated for by the fact that the year also saw the highest number of individual domain names dealt with in a given year (4,688) since the UDRP - a quick and cost effective way of addressing allegations of cybersquatting - was launched ten years ago.