Wednesday whimsies

"Passing off or customer confusion?" asks the IPKat's friend Lucy Wimberley (SABIP), who had the good fortune to be detained in Turkey by the recent volcanic ash incident for long enough to grab this photo opportunity. Many thank, Lucy!


Recent publications. Issue 2 of the 2010 volume of the bimonthly WIPO Magazine has now been published. You can read it in full here. The Kat's pick of the articles is "Better drawings make a better patent" by Bernadette Marshall. This piece addresses a number of topics that the Kat never thought about before, since he has always taken the graphics for granted. Also just out is the final issue of Copyright World, which from next month is being folded, together with Trademark World and Patent World, into a new Intellectual Property Magazine by its publishers, Informa Law. Details of the final issue's contents can be found here. As its founder editor, IPKat team member is sad to see it go.

Around the blogs. The IPKat has recently discovered a rather lovely Irish IP blog, A Clatter of the Law, composed by Rossa McMahon. It's good to know that there's some genuine IP activity out in the lovely city of Limerick, some of the pubs of which this blog team member once had the pleasure of sampling. If you're curious about this blog's name, take a look at Rossa's commemorative post for World IP Day yesterday, here.


From his trusty Welsh correspondent Nia Robert the IPKat learns of Wales’ success last week at the International Exhibition of New Products and Inventions in Geneva. A total of 14 Welsh innovators attended the exhibition, supported by the Welsh Assembly Government. Commendably the Welsh innovators won 6 Gold Medals, 5 Silver and 3 Bronze, this being the Principality's best performance ever. One product (the Sportfit sports injury rehab assistant) won the prestigious WIPO Gold Medal for best Inventor – the first time any British inventor has won this prize at Geneva.

Right: Fully fit again after using the Sportfit, these sheep are back in training for the Olympics

Another product (the Yoke Shopper) won the Award for best Industrial Design. More importantly orders were taken for many products, licences were secured (with more to follow) and distributorships were initiated in Europe and beyond. The IPKat salutes this Welsh Assembly Government initiative which, he's sure is a model that others will wish to emulate.

Terry A. Young (President and Editor, Beyond the First World) writes to inform the IPKat of his new project, Beyond the First World (subtitled "Global News and Best Practices for Managers of Innovation and Intellectual Property"). This will have two main components: (i) a bi-monthly newsletter with 10 articles (most original research), which will be free to subscribers, and (ii) a website on which an original paper will posted each month, written by an international expert exclusively for Beyond the First World. The first paper to be so posted is "The Formation of a National Technology Transfer Network; The Case Study of FORTEC (Brazil)" by Dr Marli Elizabeth Ritter dos Santos, an international expert and WIPO trainer. Sounds good, says the IPKat.