Friday fantasies

"An apple a day keeps the doctor away,
A stitch in time saves nine.
So check the proverbial side bar list
For events -- and you'll be fine!".

Don't forget to check out the IPKat's fabled side-bar each Friday for some really enjoyable forthcoming events.

The IPKat's friend Robert Boad has taken up a new interest: bones. At least that's what he seems to be up to, since he's now the Pro Bono President of The Authentics Foundation (here and here). Meanwhile, when he's not sifting around the tibias and fibulas, he's keeping an eye on the IP news. One such snippet concerns Vanisha Mittal. Ms M is --or may one day be -- the richest woman in the world, having been named by Forbes magazine as billionaire heiress number one. Vanisha (who prefers stones to bones if the picture on the left is anything to rely on) was disappointed however to discover that her money counted for nothing in a recent dispute with a cybersquatter, who was using the vanishamittal.com website to taunt her with its contents. Ms M's claim to have the domain name transferred to her was rejected because she failed to convince WIPO Panellist Warwick Smith that she had established the necessary trade mark rights in her personal name. Luckily for her, and as in all the best Bollywood movies, there was a happy ending. In a related action a company of which she is a Director, ArcelorMittal SA, prevailed with a claim based on its registered trade marks MITTAL and ARCELORMITTAL. The same WIPO Panellist ordered that the domain name be transferred to the company.

Here's news of an old friend on the blogosphere. Datonomy, the data protection weblog supported by Olswang LLP and which IPKat team member helped set up two years ago, has just moved to a very handsome new home at www.datonomy.eu where you can continue to enjoy its take on various legal and practical matters pertaining to data protection law in the UK, Europe and sometimes beyond.


Following the post this week on footballer Wayne Rooney's reported £760,000 a month income from image rights, this Kat has received several indignant emails from readers who consider our celebrities (or "celebrities", as many prefer to designate them) to be far too spoiled and pampered. They may take comfort in an enjoyable piece in The Onion entitled "Hollywood Rangers To Manage Overpopulation Problem By Killing Off 1,200 Celebrities". This Kat has had mixed feelings about the culling of celebrities, his first brush with death being in the cinema, when Bambi's mother -- as real to him as any human -- was despatched to a world beyond the receipt of any royalty payments (why, oh, why, when Mickey Mouse, who hasn't made a decent movie since Fantasia, was allowed to live?)


Remember Bilski? Just a few short weeks ago, when the world awaited the pronouncement of the US Supreme Court in In re Bilski (see Kat notes here, here, here, here and here), you just couldn't go online without bumping into the B-word. But it's oh-so-quiet now. The September issue of the Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice (JIPLP) carries an editorial on Bilski ("A summer of anticlimax"), which you can read in full here.

Can you help? Alex Pope, a second-year law student at the University of Georgia School of Law, is a member of UGA's Journal of Intellectual Property Law editorial board. As a function of this position and as a requirement for law school, he has been tasked with writing a student note and is considering tackling "Trade marks for the blind, especially the implications of aural and haptic trade marks". He wonders if anyone can provide him with any useful information about this topic, or with the location of some articles, or indeed anything else that will help to get him started. If you've any useful ideas or thoughts, can you email Alex here and let him know. Says the IPKat, anything we learn about helping visually impaired consumers make better-informed choices when they're buying goods and services will help us to benefit the world through more effective and socially relevant applications of IP principles -- so if you can help Alex, it's all in a good cause.

Two IPKat competitions are still open: there's the CIPA Congress Menu competition (closing date 17 September) and there's the Next Year's Fashion Accessory competition (closing date 5 September). There have been some good entries for the latter, but not so many for the former.