Monday monologue

It's not a Miscellany but a Monologue today, since it's all about just one thing: INTA. This member of the IPKat team, somewhat jetlagged and disoriented, has now arrived in Boston for this year's International Trademark Association Meeting (programme here) .

Right: The Boston Tea Party -- or the best way to solve the problem of too much to carry home after visiting the INTA Exhibit Hall ...

The INTA Meeting finishes on Wednesday night, by which time reputations will have been made or broken, exciting new contacts made and alliances forged, a thousand hangovers induced and cured, and tens of thousands of anachronistic business cards exchanged.

This Kat's INTA has several highlights. These include

* The informal Meet the Bloggers session, at Lucky's Lounge this evening from 8pm until whenever. The venue is conveniently near the Boston Conference and Exhibition Center and all are welcome;

* Today is also the first-ever INTA Academic Fun Day, with a full day's programme for professors, adjuncts, academic researchers and their friends. This Kat is a member of the discussion panel of the Trademark Scholarship Symposium (10.30am to 11.45am), at which scholars Guido Westkamp and Apostolos Chronopoulos will be exposing some of their most cogent analyses to discussion;

* The annual reception hosted by Sanford T. Colb & Co., which takes place this Tuesday, from 4pm to 7.30pm at the Renaissance Boston Waterfront Hotel. If this chopped liver is a match for its fabled predecessors, guests (of whom this Kat is one) are in for a treat;

* From 3.30pm to 4.45pm on Tuesday afternoon INTA conducts its South America Regional Update. Attending last year's session, the IPKat was impressed by the quality of the presentations but saddened by the poor attendance. Also, while everyone is placing Brazil within the context of its being a BRIC nation, the other three BRIC countries are more or less around the corner to one another, while Brazil is half a world away in Latin America, where it faces very different trade conditions -- so if you want to know what's happening there, do please come;

* The same can be said for the Africa Regional Round-up, which this Kat is moderating on Wednesday from 10.15am to 11.30am. It's no good complaining about how difficult it is to sort out IP issues in that troubled continent if you don't come along and support those colleagues-in-arms who are working so hard to spread a positive message about IP and to improve its enforcement potential;

* The long sleep on the flight home.

Since it's not possible to cover everything at INTA on this blog and, even if it were possible, it would probably be oppressively boring for readers who have a low tolerance of trade marks and branding, this Kat proposes to confine himself to just one INTA post per day, summarising the things he has seen and heard. He's also happy to publish vignettes and short reports sent in by readers (who should email him here).

Boston Tea Party here
Cats' Tea Party here