Friday fantasies

If you check the side bar today, you'll find more than the usual list of forthcoming events. There's also a poll to select the best entry for the IP Anthem competition (click here to read the entries). Nia Roberts' rousing hymn to IP,"Designers, Inventors and Owners of Brands" is out in front, but Jim Boff's "The Sun Has Got His Hat On" is not so far behind, and there's still time for the other runners to catch up.

World IP Day events, Monday 26 April. The IPKat's Cheese and Wine Celebrity Poetry Reception is quite oversubscribed now, so can the Kats' friends, family, colleagues and creditors please stop begging shamelessly for admission. There is still some space, however, for the IP Finance lunchtime seminar on Brands and the Cost of Corporate Conscience (details here). Marjolijn Vencken (Trouble in Paradise) will be giving a dramatic presentation, complete with video clips, which you'll never forget. See you there!

Quick question. In the context of yesterday's post on the British National Party's unauthorised use of the image of a jar of Marmite in a party political broadcast, it has been suggested that the owner of a brand that has been involuntarily included in a political broadcast which is subsequently loaded on to YouTube can ask to have the clip taken down. The IPKat's question is "what's the shortest amount of time that, in your experience, has elapsed between asking for a clip to be taken down and its actual removal?" Please post your answer as a Comment, below -- don't send it as an email unless the Comment facility has died again.

ACID reigns. The IPKat congratulates Anti Copying in Design (ACID) for helping to engineer an on-the-spot mediation between two exhibitors at the annual Spring Fair event this year. Lindy Lou Ltd discovered that its see-through umbrellas, protected by nothing more than an unregistered Community design right, were not the only items of that description on display: fellow exhibitor Sunrise Bags was peddling much the same product. Following the intervention of ACID, using its Exhibition Protocol, Sunrise Bags immediately agreed to withdraw its product from display. Lindy Lou has subsequently secured delivery up of the infringing stock plus the appropriate undertakings. The IPKat thinks that initiatives such as this are a great idea: they make it cheaper for the IP owner and the infringer alike. More on ACID's involvement in Spring Fair here.

Around the blogs. A recent entrant to the blogosphere is the Kluwer Patent Blog, which is driven by a most distinguished international nine-person team. It's well presented and provides a relatively discreet marketing push for Kluwer's IP products. The IPKat wishes it well.