Friday fantasies

Angry readers accuse one another
of having eaten the IPKat's
Forthcoming Events sidebar feature

"They seek it here, they seek it there ..."

* You may be one of the tens of readers who have emailed the IPKat or one or more of his team members to say "The sidebar links have fallen off the side of my screen ..."
* You may be one of the puzzled persons who thought perhaps the IPKat had given up on his Forthcoming Events
* You may not even have noticed that the list of conferences and seminars has disappeared.

Anyway, in a fit of good housekeeping, Tufty the Kat did some tidying up and has given the Forthcoming Events their own big, bright new home here.  The sidebar will now contain a message reminding readers to check what's coming up. plus the necessary link. The other Kats thank Tufty for his community-mindedness -- hoping that their readers are not as averse to change as most real cats are.


Urgent email newsflash: IPKat team member Jeremy has a mountain of really interesting (and sometimes quite pressing) correspondence  in his in-tray.  He apologises in advance for the fact that he is around 4-5 days behind with his replies and he begs his friends and correspondents (i) to be patient with him and (ii) not to send follow-up emails asking if he has received the original ones.  Many thanks!

Green patent :-)

More good news from WIPO: the World Intellectual Property Organization yesterday launched its own online tool to make it easier to search for green patents. According to the UN agency's press release, this tool is linked to WIPO's International Patent Classification (IPC) system.  Says WIPO: "This will help to help in identifying existing and emerging green technologies, as well as potential partners for further R&D and commercial exploitation".  Says Merpel, let's see how much use is made of it: is there some metric for charting its cost-effectiveness, she wonders.

Just back from this year's MARQUES Conference in Berlin (click here for today's 7th and most recent report), IPKat team member Jeremy was struck by the fact that, so many years after issues such as IP securitisation, valuation and royalty assessment become recognised problems for IP professionals as well as for their clients, there is still so much self-confessed discomfort on so many of the IP community at having to tackle these topics.  The Kat can't say that CLT's IP and Finance one-day conference scheduled for 20 October will dispel the fog the surrounds the topic, but it may be a good place for people in need of some reasonable guidance to start.  Worth a shot? Could be.  If you don't fancy the conference topics, there's still quite a fun competition to enter too: details here.

Still on the subject of MARQUES, this organisation -- the mouthpiece (or at least a mouthpiece) of European trade mark owners and their professional advisers in Europe -- hosts the Class 46 European trade mark law weblog.  Class 46 has a big following, and is authored by a ten-strong team of bloggers.  It needs more volunteers, though, to contribute news and information from countries which its blog team don't cover, and also to enable to blog to comment on more Community trade mark cases at OHIM and General Court level.  So, if [and ONLY if, growls the Kat] you (i) love trade marks, (ii) either know how to blog or are willing to learn, (iii) are professionally or academically competent to discuss trade mark issues, (iv) possess a high level of literacy and proficiency in English and (v) you  or your employer are a member of MARQUES, Jeremy would love to hear from you.  Please email him here  using the subject line "Class 46" (but don't expect a reply for several days ...)